One day in 2009, George Baer Wallace was at the New York City apartment of J.D. Martignon, the onetime owner of Midnight Records. The Chelsea storefront, known for its stellar bootlegs section, had closed several years earlier, but Martignon still sold records out of his apartment. Wallace began rifling through his friend’s “employee stack,” a pile of records next to the stereo that the former staff used to play at the store. He came across Lotti Golden ’s 1969 debut, Motor-Cycle , an album neither were familiar with, and gave it a spin.

Motor-Cycle showed a teenage powerhouse basking in R&B-inflected harmonies and the gritty sensibility of her native New York. Released on Atlantic Records, it was Golden’s only album before falling into obscurity. Hearing it, Wallace and Martignon we

See Full Page