A rather bizarre but totally hip record – Sidney Poitier gives dark moody readings of Plato, in his cold hip voice, with some groovy hipster jazz backing by Fred Katz, over great tracks like "Our World is a Cave" and "Women's Place in Society". The music is actually pretty great – kind of like Chico Hamilton-styled jazz, and done in a way that brings a lot more life to the record than you'd expect from just Sidney's voice! LP, Vinyl record album

A pretty compelling album for Sidney – a selection of poems written by African Americans – stretching back across a variety of styles, and read to musical accompaniment and strange production effects! Sidney's joined by Doris Belack, who provides a female voice on a few numbers – and the overall style of the album is quite dark, almost somber – with lots of echo on the vocals, and added percussion, harp, piano, and other incidental sound bits. Titles include "When Malinda Sings", "Mother To Son", "The Debt", "At Candle Lightin Time", "The Creation", "Yet I Do Marvel", "Debate Of Dark Brothers", "Epigram", "We Wear The Mask", and "When You Have Forgotten Sunday". LP, Vinyl record album

One of the hippest takes ever on the Porgy & Bess score – done in duet format by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, in a fuller spirit than their other albums for Verve! Like many late 50s albums of Gershwin's score, this one was issued in advance of the film with Sidney Poitier – but unlike most, this is less of a cash-in affair, and really takes Gershwin's music on its own – serving it up with that newly serious style that Verve was hitting with some artists, especially Ella, in the latter half of the 50s. Most tracks have relatively full backings – strings and jazz orchestrations – and the double-length set features 15 tracks that include "Buzzard Song", "I Got Plenty O Nuttin", "My Man's Gone Now", "I Wants To Stay Here", "Summertime", "It Ain't Necessarily So", "What You Want Wid Bess", "There's A Boat Dat's Leavin Soon For New York", "Oh Lawd I'm On My Way", and "A Woman Is A Sometime Thing". CD

One of the hippest takes ever on the Porgy & Bess score – done in duet format by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, in a fuller spirit than their other albums for Verve! Like many late 50s albums of Gershwin's score, this one was issued in advance of the film with Sidney Poitier – but unlike most, this is less of a cash-in affair, and really takes Gershwin's music on its own – serving it up with that newly serious style that Verve was hitting with some artists, especially Ella, in the latter half of the 50s. Most tracks have relatively full backings – strings and jazz orchestrations – and the double-length set features 15 tracks that include "Buzzard Song", "I Got Plenty O Nuttin", "My Man's Gone Now", "I Wants To Stay Here", "Summertime", "It Ain't Necessarily So", "What You Want Wid Bess", "There's A Boat Dat's Leavin Soon For New York", "Oh Lawd I'm On My Way", and "A Woman Is A Sometime Thing". LP, Vinyl record album

One of the hippest takes ever on the Porgy & Bess score – done in duet format by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, in a fuller spirit than their other albums for Verve! Like many late 50s albums of Gershwin's score, this one was issued in advance of the film with Sidney Poitier – but unlike most, this is less of a cash-in affair, and really takes Gershwin's music on its own – serving it up with that newly serious style that Verve was hitting with some artists, especially Ella, in the latter half of the 50s. Most tracks have relatively full backings – strings and jazz orchestrations – and the double-length set features 15 tracks that include "Buzzard Song", "I Got Plenty O Nuttin", "My Man's Gone Now", "I Wants To Stay Here", "Summertime", "It Ain't Necessarily So", "What You Want Wid Bess", "There's A Boat Dat's Leavin Soon For New York", "Oh Lawd I'm On My Way", and "A Woman Is A Sometime Thing". LP, Vinyl record album

One of the last great 70s soundtracks on Curtom Records – a smoking little set that pairs the music of Curtis Mayfield with the vocals of Mavis Staples! Curtis is very much in charge of the record from the start, and works in a hard-stepping and righteous mode that recalls his earlier work on the Staples' soundtrack for Let's Do It Again – no surprise, given that Piece Of The Action was the next installment in the successful series of films that starred Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier! The sound here is nicely full, hitting that rich mid 70s Curtom mode that sounded so great on Leroy Hutson and Natural Four albums of the time – a slightly more sophisticated approach that mixed in a bit of strings with the heavier funk at the bottom. Titles include "Chocolate City", written by Curtis with Keni Burke and Henry Gibson, plus "Getting Deeper", "A Piece Of The Action", "Orientation", and "Of Whom Shall I Be Afraid". LP, Vinyl record album