A lot of great music goes unappreciated in its time, but rarely do people take 30 years to catch on. Fortunately for Hyattsville, Maryland native George Smallwood, his unexpected renaissance occurred in his lifetime.
Unless you’re throwing around play money on eBay for one of the 100 or so known copies of Just 4 You, George Smallwood probably was pretty deep under the radar of most music fans, but when Peoples Potential Unlimited (Washington DC label) started re-releasing his 12”’s and Jazzman (UK) made the aforementioned LP the fifth entry in its Holy Grail reissue series, it increased the Smallwood supply by 1000 percent and pushed the almost mythic modern soul singer back to the stage and the spotlight he never really knew.
A trucker until 1968, Smallwood declares, “Music never really took me until I lost my sight,” before launching into “Touching is my Thing” on the clip above—a gem from DC public access. Leap to his 2010 performance below, and there he is, still with his Yamaha PSR-510, still rocking pre-programmed drum loops with mellow clouds of chords and satiny sheets of tender soul. A veritable encyclopedia of music, Smallwood says he carries around 450 songs in his head, most of which are covers of radio hits from the 70s and 80s, but all done in his own inimitable style.