Digging the Seventies Soul Experience

Although the 1960s were considered a time when soul and R&B music was at its commercial and artistic zenith, the '70s were an equally fertile and no less seminal period for the genre. Labels like Motown and Stax may have lost some of their initial spark, creative control and key artists, but other players were just lacing up their dancing shoes. As much as the '60s had been about an explosion of new ideas regarding sex and politics, what's come to be known as the Me Decade saw many African-American artists working out these concepts in their music and lyrics in new and fascinating ways.

Whereas '70s black music is frequently associated with mindless disco, other styles were just as prevalent, from funk to silky Philly to socio-political plaints from brilliant performers such as Isaac Hayes, Spinners, Chi-Lites, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield. It was an eclectic lot, and although numerous artists concerned themselves with the hedonistic atmosphere of the time, many others delved into such topical concerns as Vietnam, civil unrest and the rise of the Black Power movement.

"It was a confusing, exhilarating world," says Craig Werner in the liner notes to Rhino's new expansive boxed set, Can You Dig It? The '70s Soul Experience. "The future, for a moment, felt wide open. From the start, the forces that would close most of the options down were already plotting their counterattack. By the end of the decade, stagflation, white backlash and the movement's own mistakes would combine to put an end to one of the most promising moments in American cultural history. Trying to make sense of any of it Ö without Black Power is like trying to appreciate a lava lamp without pharmaceutical assistance."

Perhaps the best way to understand a culture and its place in history is through its art, and certainly the black music of the '70s, amply represented over the course of six CDs on Can You Dig It?, is perhaps the best place to start. With 136 tracks it's a daunting endeavor for the listener, but it's never an ordeal, because these are among the most engaging songs to be found in any form of popular music.

Moving chronologically through the decade (although the first few tracks on Disc 1 are from 1969), the set kicks off with the Friends of Distinction's breezy "Grazing in the Grass" and grooves through memorable hits like Sly Stone's "Everybody Is a Star" and the Delfonics glorious "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)." Along the way are such wondrous songs as the 5 Stairsteps' "O-O-H Child," the Persuaders' "Thin Line Between Love and Hate" and Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." For every tune that racked up time on the charts, there's an obscure nugget waiting to be rediscovered, like "Hearsay" by the Soul Children and Timmy Thomas' "Why Can't We Live Together," which experiments with an early beat box. Throughout, the music is funky, transcendent and diverse. It is also urbane, witty, insouciant, rough, relaxed, angry and intense. It is human.

Housed in a beautifully designed 8-Track carrying case that includes a 100-page booklet featuring extensive liner notes and a hilarious glossary of slang terms like 'frocular eclipse ("a phenomenon caused by the total or partial obscuring of the sun by a particularly fly blow-out") and split ("to evacuate the scene"), there's enough here to keep one groovin' for decades to come.

So, how does one ultimately define something as disparate as soul? Perhaps Werner sums it up best: "Soul refused to accept anyone's definitions of what it ought to be or do. It could soothe your soul or make you think, turn the dance floor into a cauldron of communal energy or the bedroom into an oasis of sexual healing. Every soul star had a highly personal way of being black, and together they told you more about the meaning of soul than a library full of pamphlets."

Can you dig it? If so, you can't live without this collection.

Eliot Wilder has his own Web site at www.eliotwilder.com

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