Picture sleeve.

Many people rate this his best solo album, for murder like Pusherman, Freddie’s Dead and Give Me Your Love (and less persuasively because it trespassed most deeply into rock audiences).
‘This heavy script… I could relate with a lot of it… It allowed me to get past the glitter of the drug scene and go to the depth of it — allowing a little bit of the sparkle and the highlights lyrically, but always with a moral to that.’
Superior Rhino reissue, with die-cut sleeve.

Curtis, Curtis Live, Roots, Back To The World, Sweet Exorcist… all in their own slip-cases, with the original artwork… a steal.

Gorgeous, unheralded, sweet soul from Chicago.
School-friends Clifford Curry and LaSalle Matthews started the group in 1965, with Walter Jones and Robert Thomas, all in for the long haul. They waited till 1970 for a hit — I’m Still Here, produced by Syl Johnson for Twinight — and had to ride out the label’s demise before signing to Curtom’s new Gemigo imprint in late 1973. (Super People was 1975.)
Unmistakably Chicagoan and stamped by Curtis, classically schooled but on the cusp… with its roots in the chivalric harmonies of doowop, its bad self in dapperly distraught r&b balladry, and its eye on the new social consciousness of soul and funk.
Typical Numero loveliness.

Firing interpretations of Curtis, full of funk and soulfulness, grooving jazz fire, and good old-fashioned revolutionary politics, by this octet with Hamid Drake, Dave Burrell, Leena Conquest, Amiri Baraka.
Dynamite twenty-minute version of (Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go.

Richard Evans and Charles Stepney arrangements across a range of soul idioms; and top-drawer harmonizing, Temptations-style. A rare album — sampled by A Tribe Called Quest!

Super-rare Chicago sweet soul LP, originally out on Arrow Brown’s Bandit label. ‘A string-laden fantasia straddling the street corner doo-wop of the ‘50s and the Me Decade’s studio excess. Backed by the Chosen Few and the Scott Brothers, arranged by Benjamin Wright, sung by Brown’s 17-year-old daughter Tridia and Moroccos falsetto Larry Brown.’ Lovey artwork by label-mate Eugene Phillips clinches the DIY, outsider appeal.

Guaranteed to put a beam on your bean and a glide in your stride, the DVD here compiles moments from a local 1982 TV show, broadcast live from a club called The CopHerBox. It’s pleasurable enough just watching people get down so naturally, in a real-life club… but you also get ventriloquists, contortionists, body-builders, impersonators, ‘the full-figured ladies fashion show’, comedy sketches, android group-dancing to techno, rubber chickens… and bands like Universal Togetherness miming to their latest records. There’s also a mini-documentary, complete with Phil Cohran section; and twenty-three full musical performances. (Finally the Dingwalls posse gets a glimpse of Luba Raushiek in action.)
The CD and vinyls are culled from a trove of self-released 45s and small-time twelves; a die-cut cathode-ray jacket and six in-package stills are your tickets and souvenirs.
Great fun.

Arranged and produced by Leroy Hutson, who co-wrote all the songs, and part engineered at Curtom. The Voices’ best album, brimming with good vibes, bubbling grooves, great singing, political resistance.