Ebony Alleyne - You Caught Me Off Guard

Here is Ebony at her scintillating best, on this homage to Seventies Philly. Ebony was signed to Sony in 2002. I was brought in to produce her entire album. We did an magnificent album of generic live "real" smooth sophisticated soul music, with a huge orchestra (sixty strings, thirty brass), with a Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick flavour overall. This was well before Norah Jones, Joss Stone, Corinne Bailey Rae, and most particularly Amy Winehouse who all had hits with basically the same thing. The Ebony album was utterly utterly wonderful, and I was so proud of it. It took a year and a half to make, and the Sony head of A&R, Muff Winwood, oversaw it personally. "Walk Away and Never Look Back", was the first song we recorded. We introduced her to the soul scene by reactivating the old classic Okeh label, owned by Sony, and pressing up tiny limited editions of three all different singles on the Okeh label on seven inch vinyl. Everything looked wonderful and rosy, and I was already clearing a space on the wall for my Grammy award, when Sony had an upheaval and Ebony was set free. Now nearly five years later, justice finally gets served, and the world gets to hear what I consider to be my finest hour musically.