My fabulous Tammi tackles the wonderful classic originally sung by the late great Barbara Acklin, "Am I The Same Girl", which was originally done back in the 1960s as a vocal version of Young Holt Unlimited's classic soul instrumental, "Soulful Strut". It epitomises the 1960s sound of Chicago so beautifully. Tammi was a teenager when I first discovered her, way back in 1993 and I have watched her blossom into the most fabulous soul diva. Her version of "No Way Out" is my favourite track off "Yesterday And Tomorrow". Tammi also sang that huge 1970s Northern Soul classic recorded by Bettye Swann on Atlantic, "Kiss My Love Goodbye", as great a Philly song as you could ever wish to hear. It had such a dreamy, timeless, smooth orchestrated feel, that I always planned to cut it on someone one day. Tammi Lavette's real name was Tamla Dhani, and when I first met her in 1993, we cut a song called "My Heart Keeps Saying No", and I initially named her Tamla Tyrrell, which, on reflection, sounds quite nice in itself. But in the end we settled on Tammi Lavette. But I discovered her in time for the Blackpool Mecca Reunion in 1998, and we took her up there to perform on the Saturday night in the Highland Room in front of a thousand people. She was actually born in Africa, but from the age of four, she spent most of her life in New York, but now lives in England. At the Mecca she performed "You Tore Apart My Broken Heart", and also sang the actual theme song for the massive DVD box set "The Strange World Of Northern Soul", a song called "Seven Days", and the video for that can be seen on here. We also cut a song called "Too Much Too Late" on her, a song which was discovered by my mentor Chris Hill when he was head of Arista records. It was an obscure single in the early nineties by a group called Rufus Doors, a brother/sister act, but he left Arista before ever signing them, so I snatched up the song and did it on Tammi. That video can also be seen on here too. We cut a whole album on Tammi, but it's never yet been released on CD although it is on iTunes.
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