Crucial Arthur — with a deadly Walter Gibbons mix.

His last two albums for Ko Ko, from 1976 and ‘77, a kind of curtains for vintage Muscle Shoals soul.

His third RCA LP, from 1976, is the most soulful and laid-back, with groovy Marvin and Stevie covers, and the two-step killer I Love You. Don Blackman on lead vocals, Mchael Brecker leading the horns.

His ambitious 1974 breakthrough as leader, superbly mixing funk and jazz improvisation on a major-label recording budget, with strong political and spiritual themes, even a nod to the Duke.

‘The sublime Time Capsule remains Weldon Irvine’s most fully realized and influential recording… unerringly soulful, spiritual, and funky. Assembled as a kind of musical scrapbook documenting the thought patterns and belief systems of the early ‘70s, it nevertheless boasts a surprising vitality and timelessness thanks to luminous funk grooves that anticipate the latter-day emergence of acid jazz. Irvine also rhymes over several tracks, further cementing his influence on successive generations of hip-hop. A profoundly righteous spirituality winds through all eight performances… deftly balancing between beatitude and bitterness. For fans of funk, soul and jazz, it doesn’t get much better than this 1973 classic’ (Jason Ankeny, AMG).

All three stone classic albums.

Terrific southern soul from the guy who wrote a string of killers as staff at Goldwax, and for Candi Staton and Clarence Carter, at Fame. The Only Way Is Up is his song; and The Osmonds’ One Bad Apple.

A songwriting mainstay of FAME from 1968 to 1972 — monsters like Candi’s Evidence — George was also a very fine singer, unmannered, hurt, open. The first of several volumes.

The 1970 LP — a neglected, heavy-soul classic — with eleven extras, unmissable deep soul like The Love Of My Man, funk like Tighten Up. Watch out, the title-track and come-again Weepers are pretty devastating.