As it did with James Carr's only other 1960s album, You Got My Mind Messed Up, Ace/Kent added so many bonus tracks to its CD reissue of A Man Needs a Woman that it essentially created an entirely new release. The 11 tracks that comprised Carr's second album, 1968's A Man Needs a Woman, lead off... [+] Expand

As it did with James Carr's only other 1960s album, You Got My Mind Messed Up, Ace/Kent added so many bonus tracks to its CD reissue of A Man Needs a Woman that it essentially created an entirely new release. The 11 tracks that comprised Carr's second album, 1968's A Man Needs a Woman, lead off this 24-track release, which adds no less than 13 bonus cuts. The 11 songs that made up the original album (some of which came out on 1966-1968 singles as well) are superior though not brilliant late-'60s Southern soul, at times more similar to Otis Redding than some gushing critics admit, highlighted by the earnest pleading title cut. "The Dark End of the Street" would rate as most listeners' favorite, though it and "You've Got My Mind Messed Up" had already appeared on You Got My Mind Messed Up, and -- more relevantly for collectors in the CD age -- have popped up on numerous other compilations, whether or not Carr was the only featured artist. Seasoned Carr fans, naturally, will be chiefly interested in this disc for the wealth of bonus material. Five of the songs were added to the U.K. version of the LP back in 1968, three of them coming from 1967-1968 singles and the other two being the uptempo "You Gotta Have Soul" and William Bell's ballad "You Hurt So Good," which made their first appearance anywhere on that British LP. Seven of the eight other songs are taken from a smattering of post-'60s compilations, though the tracks themselves were likely cut in the late '60s and early '70s. The songs in this grab bag, while characteristic of Carr's vintage work, sound like acceptable album filler rather than numbers that would have rated as outstanding performances had they been released at the time. Capping off the CD is one previously unreleased track, a cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" that musically might be the least impressive item on the disc. There's a good deal of repetition, incidentally, between Ace/Kent's three Carr CD reissues -- those being the anthology The Complete Goldwax Singles and the expanded editions of his two original albums -- but if you do splurge for all three, you'll have virtually everything known to reside in the vaults from his early career. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide [-] Collapse

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