William Devaughn

William DeVaughn, a native of Washington, D.C., beat the odds when "Be Thankful for What You Got," scaled the charts and sold a million copies…

William DeVaughn, a native of Washington, D.C., beat the odds when "Be Thankful for What You Got," scaled the charts and sold a million copies. You see, DeVaughn paid for the session. All artists who signed with Omega Productions paid to record. The title track, with its cool, shuffling beat and Biblical-influenced lyrics, was the summer jam of 1974. "Diamond in the back, sunroof top, digging the scene with a gangster lean" was the buzz phrase.

"Harlem Sessions" sounds like your favorite mix tape you made many years ago; the one that you keep playing over and over because it has all your favorite, desert-island songs. It's a groovilicious compilation of killer soul cuts from the 1970s, with blaxploitation films as the main theme. Of course, you can't realistically include EVERY great soul joint from the 1970s on two CDs, but this compilation does a great job trying. A collection of this nature has some of the usual cast of characters like Curtis Mayfield ("Superfly" and "Little Child Running Wild" from his must-have soundtrack to "Superfly") and Isaac Hayes ("Shaft"), but we also get unexpected nuggets from Cuban jazz legend Mongo Santamaria ("We Got Latin Soul"), Gil Scott-Heron's "The Bottle," Shirley Brown's sassy "Woman to Woman," Bob James' "Night Crawler," and Bootsy Collins' hugely influential and oft-sampled "I'd Rather Be With You." This collection gets it right in so many ways that's impossible to pass this winner up. All that's missing are the bell-bottoms and an Afro wig.

40-track 2-CD album set featuring a collection of 80's Club Classics including hits by Oliver Cheatham, Sister Sledge, Luther Vandross, Shalamar, Gwen Guthrie, Chaka Khan and many more…

In the early 1960s the music once known as rhythm and blues began to be proudly referred to as ‘soul’ music, as in heartfelt and genuine – though it was also a fact that most of the great stars of soul had originally learned their craft singing in gospel choirs. While in the 1950s songs by black artists often had to be covered by white artists like Elvis Presley in order to get radio airplay, within the space of a few years black artists started becoming more visible, and gaining popularity with a massive new audience of young white teenagers. The soundtrack of this new decade was as likely to consist of Motown or Atlantic hits as it was to be folky protest songs like We Shall Overcome. Even a cursory glance down the list of artists present on this triple CD set should convince you that – as an introduction to 1960s soul music – you’d be hard pressed to find a better cross-section of that decade’s amazing display of sheer talent than that on offer here, among them being James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers or Wilson Pickett. It’s an impressive roster!

120 hits in funk, soul, disco is an 8-disc edition released by Dutch label Disky.