Fred Cancio – Can’t Get Enough
Fred Cancio – Ain’t Lonely No More
Fred Cancio – Peace
I’m not sure there’s a greater joy than finding a record that you would never expect to have a massive drum break, but does in fact have a massive drum break on it. In some ways it’s what motivates many of us vinyl addicts and crate diggers. That chance to strike gold on a record that barely anyone else knows. While it has happened a handful of times to me, in most cases, a bit like buying rare gems from an amazing jewelry store, it’s much more likely that I pick up one of these records from some other collector, in this case from the one and only DJ Shadow.
As I mentioned in the October “Moods,” this one was a record that if I saw it in the bins at Rappcats, I likely completely skipped over it. The record gods smiled on me twice this day though, first when Shadow played “Can’t Get Enough” over the house speakers and I heard those massive drums, and second, when despite how amazing those drums are, no one decided to buy the album before me.
From what little I could gather, Fred Cancio and his family (his wife Cookie is responsible for the album’s design) preached and sang the gospel through the US, perhaps also abroad, for many years, up until his death in 2019. He has a lovely, booming, voice and sings these devotional tunes with great sincerity, but it is the band that most drew me to this record. Unfortunately, aside from some credits to Gary Tosti, there isn’t any information on the musicians who recorded the funky backing tracks on the best tunes here on this LP, and I have no clue who the stellar drummer is. To my ears they sound too polished and too locked in to “just” be local musicians from a La Habra church. What they add to “Can’t Get Enough,” and “Peace” gives the feel of a seasoned Jazz or Funk band. It is highly likely I’ll never find out who the musicians were on this album and that is often the case with private press records such as these. But, in some ways that is exactly their charm. In the mysteries that remain after initial discovery, there is always the possibility that there may be more gold to mine some day in the future.