Sedan - Sedan (40th Anniversary) [Red]

Sedan made one record and vanished, a Cincinnati soul outfit nobody outside crate digging circles had heard of until now, reissued here as a numbered edition of 500 on translucent red vinyl.

Almost nothing about this group survives beyond the record itself. They formed in the early 1980s, cut a single self-titled album in 1985, and broke up shortly after, the kind of story that describes half the great obscure soul records ever made. The one thread anyone can follow is Craig E. Robinson, who played on this session before going on to co-found Dayton, the Ohio funk band that actually broke through, and later built a career as a producer. Whatever he learned here, he took with him.

Snake Dancin' is the reason collectors chase this record, a boogie groove that never once eases off, tight bass and horns stabbing in perfect formation. You Ain't Got Nothin' to Do rides a slower, more seductive pocket, All Night Affair earns its title with a bassline built for exactly that, and Stick to Your Dream closes things out on the album's most sincere note, a group clearly hoping this record would be the start of something rather than the whole of it.

It wasn't, but forty years on, somebody finally noticed. That's its own kind of ending.