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A masterpiece of hard and heavy funk – from one of the best bands of the early 70s! The Nite Liters were a legendary funky combo that provided the backing for some of New Birth's best albums – but on their own, they were even funkier, and had a sound that was part JBs, part Meters, and all funky! This album may well be the group's best – their last for RCA, and a set that really has them honing their edge incredibly. The drums are amazing, the keyboards great, and the horns have this quality that's both complex, yet right on the money – making for a richness in sound that really sets the group apart from their contemporaries. A few singers from The New Birth provide chorus vocals on a few tracks – but most of the set is instrumental, and the record's one we'd gladly stack next to our Meters albums on Josie or JBs classics on People. Every track's a gem – and titles include "Drumology", "Excuse Me While I Do My Thing", "Serenade for a Jive Turkey", "Happy Hooker", "Craaashing", "Damn", "Pee-Foul", and a sweet cover of "Valdez in the Country" that's been sampled at least once over the years!

Cold, hard, and funky! This might be the greatest album ever by this legendary 70s funk band – and it's got a killer sound that has the tightness of the JBs, the rawness of the early Meters, and the frenzy of a rare funky 45! Includes the incredible "Afro Strut" – worth the price of the record alone, as it's got this screaming sax riff that's completely insane! Other nice ones include covers of "Shaft" and "Them Changes", plus "Brand X", "Baker's Instant", and "Respect To The Other Man".

A great album filled with hard breaks, tight choppy guitars, and a deep funky sound. This is one of the best early albums by the Nite Liters, and it's filled with great grooves like "Funky-Doo", "Stinkin Charlie", and "K-Jee" – but just about every track is a funky winner! These guys fit right in between The Meters & The JBs – and in our book, they're one of the best instrumental funk acts of the 70s! The album's like finding a pile of rare funky 45s, all pressed onto the same piece of wax!

Stone funky funky! This is an excellent reissue of the Nite Liters' classic first album, and a monster batch of funky instrumentals that we'd put up there with the great Meters records on Josie, or the classic JBs LPs on People! There's lots of hard drums, choppy guitars, and good funky grooves. The tracks are short and hard, with the kind of raw funk groove that you buy rare funk LPs for. Tracks include "Itchy Brother", "Snap Your Twig", "Down & Dirty", "The Heckler", and "Stuff N It".

Funky funky funky! The Duke Of Burlington were a lost Italian combo from the 70s – but on their best cuts, you'd swear they were an American group like The Meters or The Nite Liters! The band mix up hard heavy piano, funky drum breaks, choppy guitar, and some nice soulful flute solos – and the overall sound is just great! This album includes the incredible breakbeat classic "Flash", sampled many times over the years – but darn great on its own! Also includes some nice covers – like "Soul Clap 69", "Viva Tirado", "30 60 90", and "I Want You Back" – plus some really great original material, like "Criss Cross", "Slot Machine", and "LSD". Great stuff – and what a piano sound!

A tremendous little record from Love Peace & Happiness – a great vocal trio from the early 70s, and one who really shine with this overlooked gem for RCA! The trio were part of the New Birth/Nite Liters universe that producer Harvey Fuqua brought to the label at the time – and they've got a hip sound that's right up there with the other two groups – with whom they were very intimately involved – working here with arrangements from Fuqua that are almost his contribution to post-Motown sounds in the 70s, the way that Holland-Dozier-Holland were working at Invictus. Ann Bogan really soars with righteous leads in the group – and gets equal support from brothers Leslie and Melvin Wilson – who really help underscore some of the bolder elements of the music – especially on the funkier cuts. Titles include "I Don't Want To Do Wrong", "Lonesome Lonely & Alone", "Don't Knock My Love", "If I Owned The World", "You Can't Cheat the Cheater", "Stay", "Mind", and "You've Chosen Me". Great reissue – with excellent sound and very detailed notes!

2 long-overdue classics from New Birth – back to back on a single CD! Ain't No Big Thing captures the group near the beginning of their career – when they were sort of a funky soul army, featuring the instrumental talents of The Nite-Liters, the vocal strength of a number of excellent members, and the raw production skills of the great Harvey Fuqua! This album's one of their best-ever – and it features a great mix of soul and funk, with some sweet cuts, and other nice harder numbers, all done in the warm spirit of the group when they were in their prime. Includes "Honeybee", "Oh What a Feeling", "How Good It Feels", plus groovy covers, like "I Want to Make It With You" and "Never Can Say Goodbye". Coming Together is an excellent early album by New Birth – with a good straight ahead soul style, and some nice arrangements by Vernon Bullock, Harvey Fuqua, and Bert De Coteaux. The tracks are a mix of originals and covers, and the band is great throughout – grooving hard in a souful way that makes the record glisten with an honest intensity that's missing from some of the group's later work. With "African Cry", "Don't Knock My Love", "All the Way", "Two Kinds of People", "Yesterday I Heard The Rain", and "I Don't Want To Do Wrong". A tough one to find, and the album that will make you love the band!

Way more than just another soul group – as The New Birth are almost big enough to be their own sort of soul music village – complete with different neighborhoods along the way! Vocals are handled by the combined groups of The Mint Juleps and Now Sound – gals and guys that soar together wonderfully with backings from The Nite-Liters – who help give the record a righteous undercurrent at most points, which makes the whole thing sound way hipper than any other projects of this nature! Vernon Bulllock acts as the music director for the whole group – really pulling things together with a tightness that's outta sight – and leadership of the project comes from Harvey Fuqua – who arranged and produced as well. There's some massively heavy talent on board for this initial outing, and you can definitely hear it all come into play beautifully – a wonderful harmony of rich talents, without any egos or issues to get in the way. Vocals chance nicely throughout – sometimes a female lead, sometimes male – as do the grooves, which are funky one minute, and mellow the next! Tracks include "All The Way", "Pretty Words Don't Mean A Thing", "One Way Bus", "It's You Or No One", "Do The Funky Chicken", "The Unh Song", and "What'll I Do". Great reissue – with excellent sound, and very detailed notes!

A smoking selection of seventies funk – a perfect introduction to the genre, and one that's overflowing with the kind of classics that got first got us started loving music like this! The set list is decidedly hip – cuts that didn't always get much play back in the day, but which have gone onto become huge over the decades – thanks to deep digging by serious collectors, or sampling by hip hop acts – or even by the raving reviews of funk fanatics like us! The package features a massive 19 tracks in all – with loads of heavy drums, sharp guitars, and raw soul vocals – on titles that include "Watts Breakaway" by Johnny Otis, "Got To Get A Knutt" by New Birth, "Afro Strut" by Nite-Liters, "The Dapp" by African Music Machine, "It's Alright" by Bobby Rush, "Good Thing (part 2)" by Casey Jones, "Ice Cold Daydream" by Shuggie Otis, "One Monkey" by Kim Melvin, "Get It Where You Find It" by Jesse Gresham Plus 3, "Pull My Coat" by Eddie Jacobs Exchange, "Toe Hold" by Al Kooper, "Soul Train" by Little Royal, "It's Not How Long You Make It" by Shay Holiday, "It's Just Begun" by Jimmy Castor, "Soul Drums" by Bernard Purdie, and "Funkier Than A Mosquito's Tweeter" by Nina Simone.

The rare second album from Bobby Boyd – a set that's even more soulful than his first, and which is filled with funky gems! Boyd's vocals are wonderful – tight, but with an earnest quality that almost pushes him more towards a Bill Withers vibe than some of the other funky singers of the time – a great change next to the tight combo instrumentation of the record. Tunes are almost all upbeat and funky – and the mixture of Boyd's warmth with the sharp grooves really makes for a rich sound overall – a record that should have, could have been huge – were it issued at the time – but which is finally seeing the light of day now, in this well-done full length production from Vadim! Titles include "Ain't What You Know", "Why Are You Cryin", "Good Woman", "Girl I Can Feel Ya", "On This Side Of Town", and "Let Bygones By Bygones" – plus the instrumental "The Happy Hooker", produced by Harvey Fuqua, and which seems to actually be the Nite Liters' song/version, oddly tucked into this album!

Excellent album that Harvey Fuqua put together with his old band during the time that he had emerged as a successful soul producer at RCA working with bands like The Nite Liters and The New Birth. The album features the group reprising some of their classic doo wop tracks, and giving them a 70's edge with the help of a small combo that includes Norman Harris, Bobby Eli, and Vernon Bullock. One highlight includes a great remake of "Sincerely" that has a nice break and a good groove to it. Other goodies are "The Ten Commandments", and "Most Of All". Better than you'd think!

Amazing material from this mini-soul empire – the mighty New Birth collective, which also features great backing work from The Nite-Liters! The package is a bit low on notes, but features some really standout performances from the ensemble – hard-hitting soul produced by the mighty Harvey Fuqua, and easily some of the most memorable material from RCA Records in the early 70s. The vocals are amazing – strong harmonies with really breakout leads, both male and female – and titles include the classic "Wild Flower" – plus "Dream Merchant", "I Can Understand It", "It's Impossible", "I Don't Want To Do Wrong", "I Wash My Hands Of The Whole Damn Deal (part 1)", "How Good It Feels", "Do It Again", "Until It's Time For You To Go", and "Granddaddy (part 1)".

One of the most old school volumes of this always-great series – a set that features mostly obscure soul singles from the late 60s and early 70s – many of which we've never had on reissues before! The groove here is more in the style that Chicago Steppers used back in the day – the mellow soul that first burned brightly in the mid 60s, then continued to supply the scene with some great music as years went on. And because of that mode, many of the tracks here have a great late nite feel – not exactly sweet soul, but not too far away either – thanks to some great vocals. Titles include "I Made Up My Mind" and "I'm Not Ready To Settle Down" by The Cheers, "I Love You More" by Lee Williams & The Cymbals, "Feel Kind Of Bad" by The Radiants, "You've Said It All" by Steve Karmen Orchestra, "Pull Together" by Nite Liters, "Here I Am Baby" by Barbara McNair, "Stay A While With Me" by Sharon Ridley, "Here I Am & Here I Stay" by Sonji Clay, "Stealing Watermelons" by Chambers Brothers, and "Got No One" by Delcardos.