The march to self-sufficiency among musicians continues. One of Britain's great soul singers, Mick Hucknall and his group Simply Red, are going it alone:

Redhead popstar MICK HUCKNALL has denounced his former record contract as "immoral".

The SIMPLY RED star says he was deeply unhappy with the terms of his deal with EASTWEST, part of WARNER MUSIC, which expired in April 2000.

Hucknall is angry at the fact he paid for recording and marketing costs - but the record company still owned the master tapes.

The 42-year-old and his band have released their eighth album, HOME, on his own label, SIMPLYRED.COM. By releasing his own record he hopes to earn royalties up to 400 per cent higher than on a standard record company contract. [Financial Times - subscription required]

I'm not sure how much 'morality" has to do with it, but it was a bad deal. Hucknall's new CD, Home, was released Monday in the UK:

HOME, the brand new album from Simply Red, is released today in most of Europe, Japan and South Africa and should be available in all your usual High Street stores right now!

It's release in South America, South East Asia, Australasia and Eastern Europe will follow soon afterwards and then later this year it will be released in Canada and the USA.

Go get 'em, Mick. Simply Red has always been much more popular in Europe than here, but their greatest hits package, with the mournful, beautiful "Holding Back the Years," the jamming Euro-soul dancefloor winners "Money's Too Tight to Mention" and "Right Thing," as well as the cover of the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' classic "If You Don't Know Me By Now" is well worth owning.

A thus far lesser-known artist, Eleni Mandell, is also on her own and doing well. She was profiled yesterday in the Chcago Tribune:

anyone who thinks it's impossible for a young songsmith without perfect cheekbones and industry clout to make a go of it should consider the career of L.A.-based singer-songwriter Eleni Mandell. While Mandell hasn't experienced a fraction of Jones' acclaim, over the course of a four-year recording career she's found that it's possible to make a living while working entirely outside the mainstream music industry.

As a child growing up in the L.A. area, Mandell played piano and violin before eventually switching to guitar as a teenager when she began to explore songwriting and playing in bands. According to Mandell, nothing clicked until she had a chance encounter with legendary L.A. songwriter, raconteur and scenester Chuck E. Weiss. (Weiss is a well-known pal of Tom Waits and the subject of Rickie Lee Jones' 1979 hit "Chuck E's in Love.")

Not a commercial style

At Weiss' urging, Mandell began focusing more intently on songwriting, and within a few years she began issuing a series of albums on tiny independent labels — "Wishbone" (1999), "Thrill" (2000), "Snakebite" (2002) — that showcased an impossible to categorize, non-commercial songwriting style. While there's an instantly identifiable Mandell sound, it encompasses jazzy torch songs, quirky Waits-style junkyard balladry, old-time C&W and wild jazz-folk excursions that Mandell invests with all the searing vocal drama of PJ Harvey.

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