The Jackson Sisters released "I Believe In Miracles" in 1973. I've posted the spectacular ChociGlickmix by London DJ Mark McKenzie (DJ Choci----Roc) above, alongside the original version. Read below why it's one of writer Andrew Collins' 143 favourite songs of all time...
Artist: The Jackson Sisters
Title: I Believe In Miracles
Description: single
Label: Prophesy
Release date: 1973; 1987
First heard: circa 2003
Title: I Believe In Miracles
Description: single
Label: Prophesy
Release date: 1973; 1987
First heard: circa 2003
I’m certain I didn’t hear this veritable starburst of Detroit soul in 1973, which is when it was first put out on the short-lived Prophesy records (look at that lovely label above, with its youngster-confusing hole), nor in subsequent 70s pressings. And I definitely wasn’t going to the right clubs to hear it resurface on the Rare Groove scene when it was reissued to a shrug of the charts’ shoulders in 1987. (Though in London, I was all about The Wedding Present, Pixies, Deacon Blue and George Gershwin at that time, my main club being the Town & Country.)
What I do know for a fact is that it was love at first listen: the Pearl & Dean-indebted orchestral fanfare, the loose-limbed groove, the keyboard splurges and then, that irresistible, sun-kissed five-sibling harmony: “I believe in miracles, baby, I believe in you-ooooooh!”
Possibly my favourite soul track of all-time, it’s so positive, so airborne, so persuasive, it has you hammering thin air and kills all known melancholia dead. Still only sporadically recruited for compilations (I first came across it on the out-of-print 100% 80s Soul, where it out-funked better-known tunes by Indeep and the Salsoul Orchestra by dint of not actually being 80s soul), the Jackson Sisters remain a collector’s item with a misleading surname, having put out one LP on Tiger Lily and never had a hit. But such intellectual credibility is dust next to the spritzing, zealous, sky-touching glee of the track. Lyn, Pat, Rae, Gennie and Jacqueline believe in miracles – don’t you-ooooh?
NB: This entry was adapted from a piece about “happy songs” I contributed toWord magazine in 2011. It is the very criminal lack of Word magazine that in many ways drove me to start this blog, so it seems entirely apposite.
theres two more wonderful versions
ReplyDeleteMiracles by Cadien!!
ReplyDelete