Chocolate

Four CD set. With 12 UK Top 10 singles, 29 Top 40 hits and a combined 280 weeks (over five years!) in the UK charts Hot Chocolate are one of the most successful chart acts of all time. This box set features every A and B-side they issued on the seminal RAK Records label, all 36 singles. Hot Chocolate chalked up at least one hit single every year between 1970 and 1984, a rare achievement and they are among the Top 200 most successful UK chart artists of all time. Unlike many UK 'pop' acts of the day they scored chart success in the USA where 'Emma' (#3), 'Disco Queen' (#28), 'You Sexy Thing' (#3), 'So You Win Again' (#31), and 'Every 1's A Winner' (#6) were all Billboard Top 40 hits. 24 of these singles were also chart entries in Germany while eight of them went Top 20 in Australia, the band scoring hits across most of Europe as well.

The multidimensional Hot Chocolate incorporated strains of soul, rock, reggae, and disco into their sound and, during the '70s and early '80s, scored a dozen Top 10 hits in their native U.K. Formed by Errol Brown and Tony Wilson, the interracial band debuted in 1969 as Hot Chocolate Band with a cover of Plastic Ono Band's "Give Peace a Chance," issued on the Beatles' Apple Records. The band then forged a long-term alliance with producer Mickie Most and his RAK label, for which Brown and Wilson also wrote material for other artists. From 1970 through 1973, Hot Chocolate released seven singles. "Love Is Life" and "I Believe (In Love)" were Top 10 U.K. hits, as was "Brother Louie," a bleak tale regarding an interracial relationship. A cover version, shrewdly recorded by Stories, went to number one in the U.S.

The Chocolate Watchband's debut album, No Way Out was also their most heavily Rolling Stones-influenced album, but appreciating the album and what's on it (and what's not) requires some explanation. Released in September of 1967, No Way Out came at the end of the band's first 15 months of existence, a period that encompassed the recording and release of four singles of generally extraordinary quality, and as good as anything heard from any garage band anywhere during that period…