Picked up a nice acetate recently. It features Major Lance singing Delilah on one side (spelled on the disc as Deliala) and a version of Keep on loving you on the other.

I believe that a slower version of this, with a different arrangement, features on the Major's 1963 LP The Monkey Time. If so, what about the 'uptempo' version, or another take of it, did that get a release at all?

https://youtu.be/PV19XiWJ1s8

...How lovely is that? And what a nice find...

Looking forward to getting home tonight and A/B'ing it with the album version.

Can't answer your question, unfortunately..

Thanks, Tony. Any observations about the differences between the two versions appreciated...

This was never released. The vocal is very different, so is the instrumental. Very nicely primitive.

Agreed Rob, it is wonderfully primitive.

At about 1:44 backing vocals kick in with (I presume) Samuel Gooden on Bass. Then they almost immediately break down: Curtis Mayfield and Fred Cash come in too late, which is surprising for the listener as we always think of them as being near perfect in the studio. My feeling is that the range or key is too high for the backing vocalists and so the expected harmonies are cut swiftly short.

Major Lance, on the other hand, does a brilliant job and it's his vocals that support the whole track. So much for the claims that The Impressions were deliberately used to support someone who was supposedly considered a very poor singer!

Had it on an 7" EP but not this faster version, very nice. Deliala is the same take or is this a stereo acetate.

Had it on an 7" EP but not this faster version, very nice. Deliala is the same take or is this a stereo acetate.

Excellent - that's good info to know. To answer your question, 'Delilah/Deliala' is a mono recording.

This and the other one that came with it are 10" acetates, which I've always presumed came out fresh from the studio as opposed to some 7" acetates that were used for advance promo purposes (that are nonetheless typically much rarer than the demos - and more so than later vinyl/styrene issues).

this is really nice