I just place my faith in five little words

Thursday music corner: Ohio natives The Isley Brothers founded as a vocal trio in the 1950s and have had a rhythm and blues career of great longevity thanks to an ever-fluctuating number of band-members, built around the Isley family and various relations and in-laws. The Isleys trailblazed with singles like 1959's Shout (made doubly famous by Lulu in 1964), and 1962's Twist and Shout (made stratospherically famous by the Beatles in 1963 and reintroduced to another generation by Ferris Bueller in 1986), but felt their career was not advancing sufficiently rapidly on the multiple record labels they released with. (In 1964 the Isleys also temporarily crossed paths with a young guitarist who joined their backing band until October of that year, James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix). 

By the time of their fourth studio album, 1966's This Old Heart of Mine, the band's dissatisfaction was growing with their current label, Tamla-Motown, which treated the act as second-string performers. The album featured no Isley-written songs, instead largely promoting Motown's skilled Holland-Dozier-Holland song production-line. Illustrating the band's subordination to the Supremes in the label hierarchy, the album's title track was originally destined to be a Supremes release, and it also includes a version of the Supremes' 1965 hit Stop! In The Name of Love. 

The album concludes with Seek and You Shall Find, a mid-tempo groove that the Isleys executed with fine precision. Written by Ivy Jo Hunter and Mickey Stevenson, who co-wrote the 1964 smash hit Dancing In The Street with Marvin Gaye, the track is a fine closer to an album by a group with higher ambitions than just performing in the shadow of shinier label-mates.

After one further album with Tamla, 1967's Soul on the Rocks, the Isleys formed their own label, T-Neck Records, on which they attained 10 platinum or gold album releases in the decade from 1973 to 1983. In a later Isley incarnation the band achieved three hit albums from 1996 to 2003, bringing their material to 21st-century audiences.         

The Isley Brothers - Seek and You Shall Find (1966)