A Taste of Honey

No amount of griping that they robbed the Best New Artist Grammy from Elvis Costello can obscure just what a surprising, counter-intuitive debut A Taste of Honey’s first LP was. As a disco group that belied the pernicious myth of the genre being mechanical and soulless, A Taste of Honey was brought into the studio by the Mizell Brothers, who picked up on the musicianship of album-cover stars Janice Marie Johnson (bass, vocals) and Hazel Payne (guitar, vocals) and saw them notch a massive smash with the deceptively-frothy but chops-rich “Boogie Oogie Oogie.” If that ain’t enough, the dreamlike mid-tempo groove of “World Spin” and the trio of love ballads that close the LP (“If We Loved”; “Sky High”; “You’re in Good Hands”) elevate A Taste of Honey well above singles-plus-filler status.