Customer Reviews

The Best of Soul Train

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Soooooouuuuuullllll Train! I'm as white as they come, but I loved this show in its heyday. I was 12 when it premiered in 1970. It was a window into a culture as smooth and brash in its musicality and vernacular as it was in its dyn-o-mite dancing and day-glo fashion. Don Cornelius was the serene ruler of this kingdom, speaking in a voice both sonorous and mellifluous, wearing royal silk shirts and maroon velveteen suits, not a hair out of place in his afro crown. I tuned in both to groove to the great songs and to make myself just a bit hipper, and my own record collection, bellbottoms, wide lapels, and platform shoes were evidence of my devotion to the music and the people who produced it.

There is no way this 3-DVD set, with its wide array of stars and 50 great songs spread over five hours, could deserve less than the highest rating, even if the mastering were second rate. But the audio and video reproduction are excellent; Time-Life knows its stuff. And there are more than three hours of extras consisting primarily of lengthy retrospective interviews with such figures as the imperturbable Don Cornelius and the voluble Smokey Robinson.

This wonderful compilation is a priceless sampler of the 1970s and a who's who of classic soul, from the Queen to the Godfather. Among others, you'll find represented Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, The Isley Brothers, The O'Jays, The Commodores, Sly Stone, Barry White, Bill Withers, Gladys Knight, Lou Rawls, Teddy Pendergrass, Curtis Mayfield, and Jaaaaaaaaaames Brown! "The Best of Soul Train" needs a star in its rating for every star on the DVDs!

One caution: some of the performers lip-sync, but that's how it was on TV back then. A complete list of the contents:

DVD 1
The Isley Brothers - "That Lady" / "Live It Up" / "Summer Breeze"
Barry White - "Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe" / "What Am I Gonna Do with You" / "You're the First, the Last, My Everything"
Love Unlimited Orchestra - "Love's Theme"
Marvin Gaye - "Come Get to This" / "Distant Lover" / "Let's Get It On"
Sly & The Family Stone - "I Want to Take You Higher" / "Dance to the Music"
Gladys Knight & The Pips - "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
The O'Jays - "Backstabbers"
Aretha Franklin - "Rock Steady"
Interviews with Don Cornelius, Smokey Robinson, and Brian McKnight

DVD 2
Bill Withers - "Use Me" / "Lean on Me"
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - "If You Don't Know Me by Now"
Commodores - "Still" / "Three Times a Lady" / "Sail On"
Curtis Mayfield - "Pusherman" / "Superfly"
War - "Cisco Kid"
The Main Ingredient - "Everybody Plays the Fool"
James Brown - "Get on the Good Foot" / "Try Me" / "Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine" / "Super Bad"
Interviews with Don Cornelius, Cuba Gooding, Sr., and Eric Casem

DVD 3
Stevie Wonder - "My Cherie Amour / Sir Duke / I Wish / These Three Words" (medley)
Aretha Franklin - "I Was Made for You"
Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson - "Ooo Baby Baby"
Teddy Pendergrass - "The Whole Town's Laughing at Me" / "I Don't Love You Anymore"
Lou Rawls - "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" / "From Now On"
L.T.D. - "Love Ballad"
The Jackson Five - "I Want You Back" / "Corner of the Sky" / "Lookin' Through the Windows"
Jermaine Jackson - "Daddy's Home"
Interviews with Smokey Robinson, Jody Watley, and Clarence Avant

Just featured performances from the show...you're lucky if you run into a Soul Train line or a regular dance sequence from the show. I'd rather DVR a full episode on Centric! Very disappointed.

Amazing that they can include so many great soul artists on this DVD set, but inexplicably FAIL to include by far the BEST live Soul Train performance ever: AL GREEN's mighty, gospel workout HERE I AM from 73! This is criminal - esp since an amazing snippet from this exact performance is featured on VH1 Classic's recent SOUL TRAIN: THE HIPPEST TRIP IN AMERICA doc that aired to promote this same DVD box set! Ironically, you'd probably do better to just DVR the VH1 doc, since it also takes time to feature what really drew fans to the show week after week for decades: THE DANCERS and the DANCE LINE! Cmon, to cut all that priceless footage out misses the entire selling point of the seminal show itself. Also, if you're just featuring performances, why not feature any artists from the 80s or 90s (I believe PRINCE appeared on the show for the firt time ever in '94 on his "Gold Experience" era?) and/or groups actually SPAWNED by Soul Train itself, i.e. no SHALAMAR? no JERMAINE STEWART? Really?! I could go on & on, as I'm a huge Soul Train fan, but, sadly, I won't be buying this.

I have only seen Disc #1 so far. Quality is excellent, no annoying on-screen logos. Marvin Gaye and the O'Jays performances are badly lip-synced, the others are pretty exciting live performances. Oh yeah, somewhat disappointing was the screaming lead guitar in the Isley's "Who's That Lady" was way down in the mix, barely audible. I will buy this entire set however, just because it's such a great slice of '70s history.

I was disappointed in the DVD set as well. In my opinion, the best part of the early, golden years of Soul Train (71-76) were the young dancers (Patricia Davis, Tyrone Proctor and Swann, Damita Jo Freeman, Rerun, James Phillips, Jeffrey Daniels, The Lockers, Little Joe, etc.), and of course the Soul Train Line. Even Don Cornelius himself admitted that those kids were the reason that the first five years were such a huge success! It really would have been nice if the DVD's included just regular dance footage. And even a lot of the performance footage that they chose is peculiar. Instead of including the Jackson 5 episode where they song their old songs and featured Jermaine, why didn't they use the episode where they rocked it out with Dancing Machine, or the later episode where they tore the stage down with Shake Your Body? Where was the episode with The Sylvers singing Boogie Fever, or young Stevie Wonder performing Superstitious? How about when The Lockers would get the floor to perform their routines? Why wasn't any of this great footage used. To be fair, there are a few moments in this DVD set that I like. But over all, I was disappointed. Hopefully someone with a more keen eye can put together Volume 2 of the classic years, or just release full sets of each episode from each early season and monitor how they sell to determine if feasible to release later seasons. That would be awesome.

I have a huge collection of dvds and I was very excited to get this 3 cd set. I was looking forward to seeing the Soul Train dancers...sadly, they have been cut out of the episodes...except for the Soul Train line (and only a few). This set is mostly bad lip-sync performances. There are a few moments I got excited about...but over all a very big disapointment. VH1 produced Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America...it was 5 stars!...I thought this documentary was part of the 3 dvd set...since they advertised the release of the dvds at the end of the show...plus it is detailed in the product description. But again, sadly, this was not included in the set...too bad. So, I thought that the single dvd for sale had the VH1 documentary on it (since the product description is the same as the 3dvd set)...So, I purchased it. It is the same as disc 1 of the 3 dvd set. What a shame...I guess I'll have to go to You Tube (for free) to see the Soul Train Dancers. If I could rate this for ZERO stars I would.

Most of the best acts from the 70s, 80s and 90s were excluded. But some of the performances such as Curtis Mayfield, Barry White and Marvin Gaye were very good. I would like to see an improvement in the subsequent DVD releases.

Ok, everyone grew up with Soul Train and everybody knows how great a lot of these episodes were! Rosie Perez, Jody Watley and several other great dancers appeared on many of these shows. These dancers were the best of America's street dancers. I couldn't wait to get the 3 DVD set because I knew it had to be great! ...... Boy was I WRONG!!! ...... This piece of crap DVD collection has the most boring, long, extended crap interview BS with Don Cornelius that you can imagine! I don't want to hear Don Cornelius ramble on about nothing, or see the same Afro Sheen commercial every 2 minutes! ...And every five minutes their rolling the credits even though it was a very small part of an episode. Where are all the great line dances! Where are the great dancer shots??? I could have picked 20 better line dance sequences than any of this crap! .... Who thought it would be great to see nothing but musicians lip synching their hits? What a BAD mix of material from a great show! They need to make a different series collection and put some thought into it next time.

Was always a fan of this fabulous show, along with Bandstand!! Our grandbaby is 3-y/o and she went nuts watching ST on a cable station! Naturally, Poppa had to buy this for her!! It was a funtime to live through, plus the talent was top notch, definitely beating out much of what's seen today!!

My wife enjoys this so much she has been sharing with family and friends virtually everyday. The James Brown performance is the best. They did place to many unnecessary commercial & Soul Train theme breaks into the programing. However we got this for less than $20.00. Definitely worth it.