Albumkritik

Neither as celebrated as the Motown and Stax explosions that preceded it nor as reviled as the disco it spawned, soul at the turn of the 1970s has been relegated to half-serious nostalgia status, along with blaxploitation movies and Superfly fashions. For a few years, though, black music called the shots on pop radio. Rhino's Didn't It Blow Your Mind! series proves that this period demands respect; these hits are among the bravest and most innovative singles in pop history.

The 120 songs in the first ten volumes run from May 1969 to June 1973. But as Greil Marcus wrote in Mystery Train, this era "represented both the most politicized black music in the history of rock 'n' roll and the most commercially potent." From War's "World Is a Ghetto" to the burgeoning feminism in Laura Lee's "Women's Love Rights" to the Nixon-era paranoia of "Smiling Faces Sometimes," by the Undisputed Truth, these records were as outspoken as any post-Dylan rock & roll protest songs. And the range, from sweet ballads to smooth Latin grooves to gospel shouting to crunching funk, reveals an openness to musical variety unparalleled on the pop charts even at the height of Sixties experimentation.

Unlike last year's Have a Nice Day series, there is very little camp value in Didn't It Blow Your Mind! Sure, 1969 saw R.B. Greaves's preposterous "Take a Letter Maria," and 1970 offered the chaotic, excessive arrangement of Gene Chandler's "Groovy Situation" (the aural equivalent of blown-out Afros and platform heels). By 1971, however, emboldened by the rising consciousness of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone, soul was solidifying a new voice, and very few of the songs after that sound the slightest bit dated. There's a reason that these records provide endless source material for hip-hop's finest samplers.

The volumes are roughly chronological, but occasionally the sequence breaks for thematic purposes – ballads predominate on volume 2, women artists on volume 5. Not everything is serious; one-shot hits like Dave and Ansil Collins's incomprehensible "Double Barrel" and the Jimmy Castor Bunch's unforgettably silly "Troglodyte (Cave Man)" drift by to remind us that this was a time when anything went. Every disc (the CDs are definitely preferable – many of the strongest cuts by women are "bonus tracks") offers at least a couple of top-drawer selections. Volume 9 – which starts with the Main Ingredient's "Everybody Plays the Fool" and Bill Withers's "Use Me" and ends with Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones" – seems the most consistent.

Part of the reason Seventies soul is less respected than the Motown and Stax classics is its lack of a single geographical focus or characteristic style. Toward the end of Blow Your Mind! however, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia International label rushes to the fore. The definitive moment of this era, in fact, is the O'Jays' transcendent "Back Stabbers," where the terror that runs through many of these records meets a swirling, propulsive string arrangement and furious vocals. After "Back Stabbers," there was nothing left to prove. Disco's formulaic fusion of the Philly Sound with watered-down James Brown beats now seems like an inevitable next step.

Brown is not on this set, nor are any of Motown's masterworks; their obvious greatness would have distracted from the aims of this collection, anyway. As it is, countless songs – the Chi-Lites' aching "Oh Girl," the Staple Singers' majestic "I'll Take You There," the Spinners' soaring "It's a Shame" – can stand next to "What's Going On," "Superstition" or "Family Affair." Forget the bell-bottom jokes; Didn't It Blow Your Mind! is the real reason to defend the Seventies. (RS 603)

ALAN LIGHT

Lesen Sie mehr auf rollingstone.com