Devoted to lavishly packaged and extensively annotated reissues of worthy but little-heard sounds from the past, the label was founded in 2003 by Tom Lunt, a former ad exec, and Ken Shipley, who had been working as a talent scout for Rykodisc Records. Rob Sevier, a DJ and musical archivist, soon became the third partner. All were dedicated collectors or "crate diggers," scouring dusty record-store bins for obscure vinyl.
"I met Ken at a record store, which is where people like us would meet," Lunt recalls. "We hung out a bit and found that we had a lot in common in terms of our interests and ambitions. I was about to go to work in Warsaw for a year [overseeing marketing for McDonald's in Poland] but I said, 'Well, if I ever get back, let's keep talking.'
"Well, I got back from Warsaw and we ran into each other again at Whole Foods. I said that I wanted to get something going: 'I've got something new that I want to do and I'm tired of the advertising industry; it's just a drag.' I left when I was 49, and I'm 56 now, the same age as rock 'n' roll. So we got together and had a lot of meetings at this Arabic place on North Avenue [Sultan's Market], and that was our office from the beginning. We knew Rob, and we knew we wanted to do a reissue label, and this whole idea of eccentric soul was something we talked about early on because Rob is a big fan and this huge source of professorial information."
The Numero Group's first release was "Eccentric Soul: The Capsoul Label," a compilation of tracks from the would-be Motown of Columbus, Ohio, in the early '70s. Since then, the Eccentric Soul series also has issued discs focusing on Chicago's Bandit label, Miami's Deep City label and Detroit's Big Mack label, among others.
What exactly is eccentric soul?
"It's left-of-center soul, and it literally means 'eccentric,'" Lunt says. "It's the stuff that wasn't on everybody's radar at the time: local-culture soul, small-label soul. It may not have had the hit potential that Stax and Motown did, but it might have had some hit potential had it been developed. In some cases, it was just overlooked."
Unearthed by Numero and overlooked no more, the Eccentric Soul recordings were a hit from the beginning, and the initially Web-only label soon began to sell to record stores, as well. It since has hit on many other genres -- the Cult Cargo series examines how American sounds were transformed in South America or the Bahamas, and other releases focus on power-pop, Israeli psychedelia and gospel -- but Eccentric Soul provided the inspiration for the label's first live revue, at the Park West on Saturday night.
"We started talking about it three years ago -- 'Wouldn't it be cool to hear some of this stuff live?' -- especially when we started doing the Twinight [reissues], because all of those people were around and some of them were still active," Lunt says. "Now, there is always the possibility of taking this out on the road, and it would do well maybe at the Pitchfork Festival or something like that."
The big question remains, however, why did the Numero boys think it was a good idea to get into the label business at a time when so many others are getting out?
"The entire industry was just on the tip of melting down, but it still seemed like there were opportunities," Lunt says. "Opportunities presented themselves in new venues on the Internet. Initially, when we didn't have a distributor, we were selling almost exclusively on the Net and direct to local stores where we could. No one thought the economy was going to collapse; no one thought the record business was going to go completely belly-up. ... The record business that was tanking was not any business that we were in. It was all new artists, and we had people who were either dead or largely forgotten, and in many ways we were giving more support to them than they had ever gotten."
And are the partners making a living on this?
"We're doing pretty well, actually," Lunt says. "Our market is so refined. It's interesting: We have a mass bleed-out of our stuff to the NPR [radio] consumers; when someone does a piece on "Morning Edition" or something, we get big numbers on Amazon. But our bread and butter is still the crate diggers, and God bless them all!"
Crate Expectations
At a time when some of Chicago’s best independent record labels are struggling for survival — witness the recent layoffs of 23 employees at Touch and Go Records — the Numero Group stands out as a surprising success.
Devoted to lavishly packaged and extensively annotated reissues of worthy but little-heard sounds from the past, the label was founded in 2003 by Tom Lunt, a former ad exec, and Ken Shipley, who had been working as a talent scout for Rykodisc Records. Rob Sevier, a DJ and musical archivist, soon became the third partner. All were dedicated collectors or “crate diggers,” scouring dusty record-store bins for obscure vinyl.
“I met Ken at a record store, which is where people like us would meet,” Lunt recalls. “We hung out a bit and found that we had a lot in common in terms of our interests and ambitions. I was about to go to work in Warsaw for a year [overseeing marketing for McDonald’s in Poland] but I said, ‘Well, if I ever get back, let’s keep talking.’
“Well, I got back from Warsaw and we ran into each other again at Whole Foods. I said that I wanted to get something going: ‘I’ve got something new that I want to do and I’m tired of the advertising industry; it’s just a drag.’ I left when I was 49, and I’m 56 now, the same age as rock ’n’ roll. So we got together and had a lot of meetings at this Arabic place on North Avenue [Sultan’s Market], and that was our office from the beginning. We knew Rob, and we knew we wanted to do a reissue label, and this whole idea of eccentric soul was something we talked about early on because Rob is a big fan and this huge source of professorial information.”
The Numero Group’s first release was “Eccentric Soul: The Capsoul Label,” a compilation of tracks from the would-be Motown of Columbus, Ohio, in the early ’70s. Since then, the Eccentric Soul series also has issued discs focusing on Chicago’s Bandit label, Miami’s Deep City label and Detroit’s Big Mack label, among others.
What exactly is eccentric soul?
“It’s left-of-center soul, and it literally means ‘eccentric,’” Lunt says. “It’s the stuff that wasn’t on everybody’s radar at the time: local-culture soul, small-label soul. It may not have had the hit potential that Stax and Motown did, but it might have had some hit potential had it been developed. In some cases, it was just overlooked.”
Unearthed by Numero and overlooked no more, the Eccentric Soul recordings were a hit from the beginning, and the initially Web-only label soon began to sell to record stores, as well. It since has hit on many other genres — the Cult Cargo series examines how American sounds were transformed in South America or the Bahamas, and other releases focus on power-pop, Israeli psychedelia and gospel — but Eccentric Soul provided the inspiration for the label’s first live revue, at the Park West on Saturday night.
“We started talking about it three years ago — ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to hear some of this stuff live?’ — especially when we started doing the Twinight [reissues], because all of those people were around and some of them were still active,” Lunt says. “Now, there is always the possibility of taking this out on the road, and it would do well maybe at the Pitchfork Festival or something like that.”
The big question remains, however, why did the Numero boys think it was a good idea to get into the label business at a time when so many others are getting out?
“The entire industry was just on the tip of melting down, but it still seemed like there were opportunities,” Lunt says. “Opportunities presented themselves in new venues on the Internet. Initially, when we didn’t have a distributor, we were selling almost exclusively on the Net and direct to local stores where we could. No one thought the economy was going to collapse; no one thought the record business was going to go completely belly-up. ... The record business that was tanking was not any business that we were in. It was all new artists, and we had people who were either dead or largely forgotten, and in many ways we were giving more support to them than they had ever gotten.”
And are the partners making a living on this?
“We’re doing pretty well, actually,” Lunt says. “Our market is so refined. It’s interesting: We have a mass bleed-out of our stuff to the NPR [radio] consumers; when someone does a piece on “Morning Edition” or something, we get big numbers on Amazon. But our bread and butter is still the crate diggers, and God bless them all!”