MLF (Music, Love, and Funk), one of the 22 Twin Cities soul artists featured on Purple Snow
Courtesy of Numero Group
When Ken Shipley wants to find new music, he doesn't check Spotify or scour recent-release bins—he hits the road. Shipley is cofounder of Numero Group, a reissue label that releases everything from homemade soul to small-batch power-pop gems. It's all ferreted out with gumshoe cunning and saintly patience, and packaged with lavishly detailed liner notes. The big win for November: Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound. More than two years in the making, Snow documents lesser-known R&B and funk acts from the late '70s and early '80s, back when Prince and the Time were putting the Twin Cities on the map.
A Typically ambitious Numero release: Syl Johnson's Complete Mythology
Numero Group has received three Grammy nominations and licensed hundreds of songs for film and television. Even with those bona fides, it still sometimes has trouble persuading musicians to open their personal vaults. "We're discovering music that doesn't want to be discovered," says Shipley, who's gone door to door checking on leads. "A lot of it is the demons of the past—people not wanting to reexamine failure."
Still, the label's ceaseless sleuthing has resulted in several multidisc must-haves. And somehow the community of artists on Purple Snow—from major-label flirtations like Alexander O'Neal to obscure crooners like Orville Shannon—made this project a relatively easy task. "Every time we turned around, someone was turning us onto something else," Shipley says. If only it were always so easy.
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