Superfly Soul - Dynamite Funk And Badass Street Grooves

This compilation of soul, funk and acid jazz from the 60s and 70s is so fine I can totally forgive the inclusion of a few rather obvious selections (the Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott-Heron, Ann Sexton and Bobby Womack tunes).Compiled by Chas Chandler - no relation to the late Animals bassist and discoverer of Jimi Hendrix but clearly a man who knows his soul - this is full of obscure classics both by well-known artists - e.g. Ike & Tina's "Cussin', Cryin' And Carryin' On", something they knew a lot about - and by genuine obscurities. Very few tracks are merely good, the overall standard is incredibly high and the stuff you don't know (unless you're a serious soul/funk buff, which I'm not) stands up really well next to the famous tunes. Chas Chandler has also written informative little notes about each tune. All in all a really top quality compilation, strongly recommended to both serious and casual fans of this stuff.

Purely in terms of music material I'd give it four stars but factoring in the sound quality I had to settle on three. Look, these tracks are all transfers from LPs and as such not necessrily bad sounding. However, don't expect the low level detail that you get from compilations that use original analogue tapes in their production. This is a far cry from the five RightOn! volumes, certainly in terms of quality of sound while the music itself is at least comparable. But no, I don't wish to discourage you from getting this collection, by all means give it a go, especially if a second hand choice is available to you. The music here is worth the outlay and the fact that the sound is a bit dull might prove an advantage in some digital playback systems.

An awesome mix of soul and funk! What makes it great is that there are iconic tracks by big names mixed with plenty of hard groove instrumentals and some obscure and more hard hitting ghetto numbers which don't make it on to more heavily advertised and commercial compilations. Now I just wanna ride in the 'Big Tomato' with my flares and aviators on, and drop by on Huggy Bear.

Good listen

There really is some great stuff on this compilation, if you are a Soul and Funk fan, and you will probably find something here you are unfamiliar with, because the compilers have gone to a lot of trouble to find some obscure stuff.This is a mix of Soul and Funk, with several cuts from the Curtom label for example, and while there are some well known cuts, from Curtis, Gil Scott Heron, Bobby Womack, the really impressive inclusions are tracks like "Its' a New Day" from a long ago deleted (and only) Skull Snaps album and "Thinking Black" from Ike Turner.If you have always stuck with the more commercial side of Soul/Funk, do yourself a favour, get this and open your ears to the ones that never made it - not because they weren't good enough, but because they didn't get the push that would have taken them to the heights.Excellent