Ichiban
2005
Soul Remix
About This Album
Ben E. King released an unassuming and low-key album called What's Important to Me in 1992 on John E. Abbey's then Atlanta-based Ichiban Records. Competent and pleasant, maybe a tad over-produced, the album featured the love songs "You Got All of Me," "She's Gone Again," and the title track, "So Important to Me," as well as a misguided cover of the Impressions' "It's Alright." Nothing rose to the level of King's pair of 1961 classics "Stand by Me" or "Spanish Harlem," and there was a certain generic feel about the whole project, as if King were simply treading water. Ichiban ran into financial problems a couple of years later, and the label had folded by the end of the 1990s, only to reappear a few years later based in Florida, which leads us to Soul Remix, a complete re-thinking of the What's Important to Me project. Again released by Ichiban, with assistance from Ryko, Soul Remix is essentially the same album with a couple of tracks dropped and a couple of tracks added (including the addition of a totally unnecessary live version of "Stand by Me"), and everything has been remixed and refocused.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,6 and 7)

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