STILL SEALED! United Artists CH-LA656-G stereo LP record album. Produced by Carl Davis. (See artist biography below.) Released 1976. Walter Jackson comes from the uptown side of Chicago soul. He was influenced more by pop crooners such as Billy Eckstine, Arthur Prysock, Al Hibbler, Joe Williams, and Nat "King" Cole than by gospel-style singers, and he frequently expressed disapproval of attempts to place him in rock 'n roll and R&B musical settings. His technical proficiency as a singer made a strong impression on everyone who ever heard or worked with him, and no less an authority than Luther Vandross has stated that Jackson was his favorite singer. Yet Jackson never quite achieved the success warranted by his prodigious vocal skills. Jackson was permanently disabled by childhood polio and performed on crutches. A fearsomely strong-willed man, however, Jackson never treated himself nor allowed himself to be treated as a handicapped person. His career began as a member of the Velvetones vocal group. In 1962, Okeh Records A&R Director Carl Davis brought Jackson to the label after hearing him sing in a Detroit piano bar. Davis and Curtis Mayfield, two of the primary forces in Chicago R&B in the 1960s, co-produced Jackson's earliest recordings for Okeh, a combination of standards such as "Moonlight in Vermont" and R&B songs aimed at contemporary R&B radio, including several Mayfield compositions ("That's What Mama Said," 1963, and "It's All Over", 1964). This recording pattern continued through later productions for Okeh by Ted Cooper; Jackson straddled the fence between pop R&B and supper-club crooning. When the combination clicked, the results were magnificent: "Funny (Not Much)" (1964), "Speak Her Name" (1967), "It's an Uphill Climb to the Bottom" (1967), and especially "Welcome Home" (1965). The hits stopped coming after "My Ship Is Comin' In" in 1967, and Jackson recorded unsuccessfully for several labels (the lone exception was "Anyway You Want Me" for Cotillion in 1969) before Carl Davis resurrected his career at his new Chi-Sound label in 1976. Jackson's Chi-Sound material was more pop- and mainstream-oriented than his Okeh recordings had been, and he succeeded with lushly produced covers of pop songs such as Morris Albert's "Feelings" (1976) and Peter Frampton's "Baby I Love Your Way" (1977). His last hit, two years before his 1983 death, was "Tell Me Where it Hurts" (Columbia, 1981).Condition: Record is sealed, unplayed, mint condition. Cover is close to near mint with factory cut corner.