Customer Reviews

What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves (1967-1977)

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4 star:		(11)
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So, I was pretty excited about this box set, but I must admit, I'm a little disappointed, mainly with some horrible edits. I guess you run this risk with most box sets, but some of the edits just broke my heart. The worst of them all was the chop job they did with Curtis' "Don't Worry...". I don't really consider this song a "rare groove," considering it's the lead song on his greatest hits cd, which is very easy to find. The edit of Eddie Hazel's "California Dreamin'" was pretty bad too; "Games, Dames and Guitar Thangs" has been rereleased, pick it up. Please. Also, "Funky Nassau, pt. 2"? Why? It's not even 2 minutes long, and pales in comparison to Part 1. Not a good representation of Beginning of the End's work.

All right, enough of my griping. I just love long, drawn-out jams, and absolutely loathe edits. But this box set does have some really awesome stuff going for it. Faze-O's "Riding High" is superb, as is "Stepping Stones" by Johnny Harris. "Cosmic Sea" by the Mystic Moods is really great too. I'll admit that I've never heard of 90% of this stuff, and most of it is reall good. I just have to skip over those edits...

But in my own opinion, if you want more bang for your buck, go with the Superfly Soul series. You can get all 3 2-cd sets for less than you'll pay for this 4-cd set, and I think the music choice is superior. And they actually have some rare, unedited Curtis, like "Billy Jack" and "Big Mac."

This set right here could very well be the holy grail of rare and hard to find grooves. This box set is funkier than a high school locker room! Every track on here is certified stank(aka funky). The most amazing thing about these tracks is that they capture the spirit of the times better than a lot of their more popular comtemporaries(at least in my opinion). "What it is" feels like an audio documentary of underdogs making the funkiest music and having a great time doing it. If you listen to how these tracks are sequenced, you'll feel like a story is being told - rather than just listening to another compliamation of vintage r&b music.

I'm only 25 years old. Every time I play this set, I feel like I'm at a 70's block party, chillin' in a long black cadillac fleetwood and scoping out some foxy mamas with hot pants and thigh high leather boots
(that's how good the music sounds). With 20 plus tracks each per disc, you can't help but be amazed with the consistent quality of the music.

All I gotta say is buy this set and let the funk be your guide to love, happiness, and your rites of passage to throw it on down and dance your
a-- off!!! If you ain't diggin on this, you're diggin a hole for yourself!

Long live the funk baby!

I counted - I had heard 5 of these songs previously. A couple, "Keep On Dancing" and "Sookie, Sookie" I'd heard as covers by garage bands. Many of the performers catalog I thought I knew. WRONG! This collection bubbles and percolates and keeps on keepin' on for the duration. If you love funky soul music, or music period, this is a very worthy collection. I fully intend on having the Curtis Mayfield song about seeing you in Hell played at my funeral. I know all my friends will be joining me there. Great job, Rhino, super songs. They're out there somewhere but they were nearly all missed by me.

This is the real deal folks. Music with grit and soul and feeling, before the shining distraction of drum machines, computers, samplers, bling, and "MTV's Cribs". I saw an ad for this and went to several book and record stores such as Borders, and to my local hip indie CD store (headquarters to the local music scene circle-jerk), trying to describe it to various clerks. Which was about like trying to teach a card trick to a basset hound. Save yourself the agony of trying to interest a white twenty-something body-piercing pincushion in ordering this set for you, and just get it here. You'll be glad you did. The sheer quantity of great music on this is staggering. I love the mix of instruments with vocal tracks, and the mix of "name" artists like Aretha or The Meters with many very obscure ones. Whoever compiled this did a great job in selecting the track order, so it makes it perfect for a long party. Everyone will be getting up and shaking their groove thang. This is priceless music from a lost era, so grab it before it disappears again.

Rare indeed; I can't imagine where you would find original 45s or even LPs containing all of these songs. That would be one lifetime task. The good folks at Rhino Records with their remarkable and creative tastes took out all of that hassle for us and now offers a rather unique set of rare funky music from the vaults of Atlantic/Atco and Warner/Reprise dating 1967-1977 with 91 tracks spanning across 4 filled-to-the-brim discs. Any soul music fan will no doubt want to explore this area of the R&B category (funk and I mean pure funk), but at times the flow of the music could seem a bit too much to handle. Some of the cuts go more than 3 1/2 minutes and sound like they might not end any time soon. The other case would be some tracks sound bizarre or unusual in terms of sound due to instrumentation, arrangements, etc. Such "bizarre" tracks are the sitar-laced rendition of "Jumpin' Jack Flash", "Steppin' Stones" with a crazed flautist leading the way on a very blazing and dizzy-sounding track. The good outweigh the not-so-good remarkably, though. So get ready to hear punchy horns, infectious, simplistic and driving drumbeats, super funky bass lines, crunchy guitars, oozing organs and ultra-soulful vocals. On disc one, some noteworthy tracks are "Spreadin' Honey", "Get Otta My Life Woman", "Snatchin' It Back", "Sexy Coffee Pot" and "Help Me Make Up My Mind" (an answer to "Can I Chane My Mind"). Be sure to check out "Sookie Sookie", "Feelin' Alright" (done by Lulu (To Sir With Love)!), and "Engine Number Nine" on disc two, "Face It" (love the female backup singers on this), "Wah Wah Man", an alternate extended mix of "Rock Steady", "Suavecito", and "Nuki Suki" (from Little Richard) on disc three as well as "Moon Shadow", "Kissing My Love", "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky", "Chug Chug-A-Lug", "Everybody Wanna Get Rich Rite Away", and "Chicken Heads" on disc four. Those were just some of my favorite tracks, so I may have missed some. Many are instrumentals, but there are a handful with vocalists singing about love, dancing, partying, social concerns, etc. Bottom line: worth checking out and worth the discovery. You definitely won't hear this stuff on commercial radio. Only about three or four songs you'll recognize; the rest is like a surprise. If you're into R&B and want to explore the funk side of it, you can't find a better pick, and about 90% of these songs aren't available (some or many) together anyplace else. The real deal of funk; that is "what it is!"

At four Cds, this certianly is a massive set, just floodding with grooves from the golden era of soul. You get some of the best of the vaults from Stax and Atlantic, with some of the huge names and some you never heard of.

The running order of What It Is is basically Chronological, which means that you get to see a real evolution of (mostly southern) soul and funk. The mamouth box starts out in 1967, when grits and butter from the recently desegragated south were the order of the day, all over the top 40 charts and AM radio. You get to hear a lot of the hits-in a new light;the remastering is just mind blowing-and a lot of tracks you didn't know.

Most people who followed soul in this era bought the 45s, but What It Is takes you to a much deeper level. There are album tracks, Beatles covers, and a lot of other material that will give you much deeper insight into this music. Hearing the obscure gems on here juxtapostioned with the hits lets you hear shopworn music in a fresh new context, making it feel almost brand new.

As the late 60s became the early 70s, even the brashest Souther Soul became funker, louder (thank you Mr. Hendrix) and more miltant. Saxaphones and castinette gave way to bongos and Wha Wha guitars, and this set allows you to see the whole process unfold.

This is NOT a textbook for soul 101. Your not going to get the slick production of Motown or the sweet candy of Gamble and Huff. But What It is offers ample volumes of fantastic music, seen through new lenses. It should keep you busy for years to come.

First of all, quick warning: Do NOT download it... get the boxed set with the trimmings.
Its a RHINO BOXED SET and the packaging is half the fun.
Second: I have mixed opinions on this...
Its a 91 track compilation of the rare funk from the Atlantic, Atco, and Warner Bros archives...
Some groups you've never heard of, some tracks you've definitely heard before...
Though the tracks in themselves are definitely deep and cover the gamut from "soul Jazz" to "R&B" and
"heavy funk", the distribution of the tracks sometimes makes the album sound monotonous and draggy... it isn't, but when you don't distribute your playlist for a variety in tempos, theme, mood and dynamics, that's what you get... As a result, I think it diminishes the greatness of the tracks... almost to the point that I'd actually have been much more satisfied with individual CDs, but the material spread out non-chronologically for variety (Is this just me?) This said... if you're a hard core funkateer, its hard not to really appreciate this, however, this wouldn't be my first choice
if you're just getting into rare funk 45's... (See some of my other reviews for suggestions... say Florida Funk: 1968-1975, Carolina Funk: First In Funk, Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 and stuff like that.)

Another strange thing about this CD is the ULTRA RARE is mixed with the... well, not so ULTRA RARE, which is a bit strange... (This adds even more to the set's disjointed quality.) Because its quasi-chronological, sometimes the logic isn't so clear... In other words, if I was a DJ and this was a radio station, not so sure I'd really be doing the music justice... even some creative mastering could have remedied this.

All in all though, think of this as a well organized suitcase full of 45s... using the wonders of your computer, you might have to reorganize the play lists... but the individual tracks in themselves are great... and you'll also hear a few rare groups that you've heard me rave about in other reviews: Black Heat, What's Up Front That Counts, Hammer's TUANE is even on it... my first organ teacher SHIRLEY SCOTT even steals the show with MESSY BESSIE... and for Hard Bop style Soul Jazz check out Grasella Oliphant and even an ultra groovy version of SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE by Brother Jack McDuff.

All in all, if you have the money to splurge, get it... but if you want stuff that's more selective rather than a mere dumping of the vaults, hold off.

RHINO, if you're reading this: re-organize the disks by theme !

This set's four discs full of the best obscurities in the vaults of various Warner-distributed record label vaults.

Treasures truly abound, leaving one to wonder why these songs weren't hits. Dig Sly Stone's Stone Flower productions of 6IX and Little Sister. The legendary Baby Huey and the Babysitters are here with their brilliant Curtis Mayfield-penned anthem "Hard Times". Ravi Shankar's nephew Ananda is here with his '70 freakout cover of the Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash". Dr. John's "Rite Away" is the fonky follow-up hit he should have had after "Right Place, Wrong Time". The Bar-Kays' debut single, "Soul Finger", proves just how much of a loss the original group was (two-thirds of the group perished alongside Otis Redding in 1967). Each song is a beauty, and the obscurities do get truly obscure. It's an ideal and essential box set to anybody who has an interest in soul and funk music.

If you didn't hear it the first time around (and you probably didn't), here's your chance to get down to some of the funkiest music you've ever heard! It's a refreshing change from the stale old sounds you've heard ten thousand times before.

Man, this thing is so awsome. I gotta say, I really dig what Rhino does with their boxsets. "Nuggets" and "No Thanks" (covering American psychedelic/garage rock from the mid-Sixties and punk music from the late Seventies respectively) are both great sets. "Nuggets II" is probably my favorite box set in the world, covering psychedlic music from around the world from the 60's.
They've broken the mold again here. This box set covers 67-77, and it's all funky. That's the important thing. What I really love about this set is how varied it is. Some of this music is essentially jazz (especially the early stuff) with no lyrics, and played by jazz muscians like Grant Green, etc. There's more typical-sounding funk music by artists you're probably all familiar with, like Sly, Aretha & Curis Mayfield. Most of it consists of artists you have never ever heard of, however, and it all sounds great. It all sounds pretty different, however, covering different syles, and approaches, and coming from varous parts of the country. There are very few weak spots, just lots of great funky music, it's all fun, and is a great thing to put on when company's over. I have some issues with the packaging, but if you're into funky American music from the 1970's, you'll cream your bell-bottoms over this one!

often when Record Companys put Retrospectives with a Various Artists take on 70's Funk&Soul it's usually the same songs that you can hear daily on your Lunch Rush Hour Old School noon special. but this time Rhino pulled out alot of stops at getting this right. these Discs contain the Organ jams with strong punchy Horns, Guitar,Bass, keyboards,Drums&overall Vamps that are timeless which have influenced countless Artists in all styles of Music. the Bar Kays,Earth,Wind&Fire, Aretha Franklin,Curtis Mayfield&countless other talents are well represented here with material that showcases different regions of the Country. back in the day long before the Internet just like with Hip-Hop back in the day you always knew a Artist from down south all the way to back East,then in the mid-west&all the way Out west by there trademark Stylings&overall presentation. this is a Collection that showcases some great treasures still in the vaults.long overdue,but better late than never. enjoy the Funk.