Blaxploitation: Volume Four - Harlem Hu$tle

If you've read the reviews for the previous three CDs in this series, then you know the scene by now, I don't really need to tell it how it is, do I? Whitewall tyres, big labels, big hats, big afroes, gold teeth, deals, paybacks, poverty and prejudice.

What I will do is briefly tell you what's on here, music-wise, before I try to make my way across New York City on the subway way past dark, stopping off to take down those baseball bat-wielding amateurs in Queens before poppin' a few street muggers....

There's more classic Temptations in an all-time favourite of mine - Law Of The Land. It is a truly fantastic, uptempo piece of funky soul that doesn't let up from the first introductory beats. I love it. 

Billy Paul's Am I Black Enough For You? properly fits in to the whole socially/culturally aware black consciousness thing (or should I say thang?). It is gloriously strong, proud and confrontational in a Sidney Poitier "They Call Me MISTER Tibbs" fashion. Can you dig this, brothers and sisters? Sure you can. Guess who's coming to dinner....

Although Michael Winner's Death Wish was not a Blaxploitation movie, being a story about a white vigilante starring Charles Bronson, it possessed a superb theme tune by Herbie Hancock which was 100% influenced by the whole Blax thing. It was so much the sound of TV and movie themes of the mid-seventies. 

Also up there as part of the whole vibe was Curtis Mayfield's magnificently militant (Don't Worry), If There's A Hell Below We're All Gonna Go, with its hard-hitting bellowed intro - 

"sisters, niggers, whiteys, crackers Jews....if there's a hell below we're all gonna go!!"

Then the brass and wah-wah arrives and Curtis lets us know what a gloomy future we have in store for us. This is copper-bottomed Blaxploitation fare, theme-wise. 

Three actual themes to Blax movies were Earth, Wind & Fire's Sweet Sweetback's Theme, Joe Simon feat. The Mainstreeters' Theme From Cleopatra Jones and Don Julian's Theme From Savage. They were three of the few genuine soundtrack numbers from the series. There weren't actually that many. Not that it mattered, the music was great anyway, and carried the message and the image perfectly.

There were a few tracks on here, though, that came over ever so slightly incongruously. There was the lush, orchestrated late sixties soul of The Delfonics' Didn't It (Blow Your Mind This Time), Bloodstone's loved-up soul ballad Natural High, Minnie Riperton's sweet soul of Inside My Love and Bob & Earl's early sixties Atlantic number Harlem Shuffle. All great tracks, sure, but maybe not quite fitting the bill. That is the only time I have thought that in this series. It is still splitting hairs, though and isn't too big a problem. Not at all. 

There are also the usual full-on funkers present - Isaac Hayes brief but powerful Truck Turner, The Bar-Kays' Son Of Shaft, with its obvious influences, War's Flying Machine, Donald Byrd's One Gun Salute, Ronnie Laws' jazz-funky Always There, The Headhunters' God Made Me Funky (unsurprisingly full of funk) and The Brothers Johnson's psychedelic pop funk in Strawberry Letter #23. 

There are big hitters here too - Marvin Gaye's I Want You, The O' Jays' For The Love Of Money and James Brown's Get Up (I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine).

Deodato's infectious September 13th has a definite soundtrack groove to it, as does the sweet, late-night saxophone of Grover Washington Jr. on Mister Magic. 

Bill Withers gives us his sparse, soulful original of Who Is He And What Is He To You and Gil Scott-Heron gets disarmingly emotional and nostalgic on the evocative Grandma's Hands. 

Sure, it's not all movie soundtrack stuff, but these four excellent double CDs have given as good a flavour of a time and a sub-genre as it as possible to do, I think. The series kicks funky ass.