VA - Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia (2008)
BAND/ARTIST: Various Artists
- Title: Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia
- Year Of Release: 2008
- Label: Legacy / Philadelphia International Records
- Genre: Rhythm & Blues, Soul, Disco, Funk, Pop
- Quality: Mp3, 320 kbps
- Total Time: 5:04:21
- Total Size: 717 Mb
- WebSite: Album Preview
Tracklist:
CD1
01 Soul Survivors - Expressway (To Your Heart) (2:21)
02 The Delfonics - La-La Means I Love You (3:22)
03 The Intruders - Cowboys To Girls (2:40)
04 Jerry Butler - Hey, Western Union Man (2:42)
05 The Delfonics - Ready Or Not Here I Come (Can't Hide From Love) (2:03)
06 Jerry Butler - Only The Strong Survive (2:38)
07 The Delfonics - Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time) (3:24)
08 Dusty Springfield - Brand New Me (2:27)
09 Wilson Pickett - Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You (2:50)
10 The Ebonys - You're The Reason Why (3:05)
11 Joe Simon - Drowning In The Sea of Love (3:23)
12 The Stylistics - I'm Stone In Love With You (3:23)
13 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - I Miss You (8:40)
14 The O'Jays - Back Stabbers (3:08)
15 The O'Jays - Sunshine (3:45)
16 The Spinners - I'll Be Around (3:13)
17 Johnny Williams - Slow Motion (Pt. 1) (3:00)
18 Billy Paul - Me And Mrs. Jones (4:48)
19 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - If You Don't Know Me By Now (3:29)
20 The Futures - Love Is Here (4:59)
CD2
01 The O'Jays - Love Train (3:00)
02 The Stylistics - Break Up To Make Up (4:00)
03 MFSB - Family Affair (4:25)
04 The Ebonys - It's Forever (4:32)
05 The O'Jays - Time To Get Down (2:55)
06 The Manhattans - There's No Me Without You (3:39)
07 The Intruders - I'll Always Love My Mama (6:39)
08 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - The Love I Lost (6:25)
09 The Intruders - I Wanna Know Your Name (5:51)
10 The Three Degrees - Dirty Ol' Man (3:06)
11 The O'Jays - Put Your Hands Together (4:09)
12 Billy Paul - Thanks For Saving My Life (3:00)
13 The Spinners - Mighty Love (4:59)
14 William DeVaughn - Be Thankful For What You Got (Pt. 1) (3:26)
15 The O'Jays - For The Love of Mone (7:23)
16 The Trammps - Where Do We Go From Here (3:46)
17 MSFB (Featuring The Three Degrees) - T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia) (5:49)
CD3
01 The Spinners (Featuring Dionne Warwick) - Then Came You (3:59)
02 MFSB (Featuring The Three Degrees) - Love Is The Message (6:39)
03 The Three Degrees - When Will I See You Again (3:01)
04 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Where Are All My Friends (3:22)
05 Bunny Sigler - Picture Us (2:37)
06 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Bad Luck (6:31)
07 The O'Jays - Give The People What They Want (4:14)
08 Billy Paul - Billy's Back Home (4:32)
09 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (Featuring Sharon Paige) - Hope That We Can Be Together Soon (3:41)
10 People's Choice - Do It Any Way You Wanna (3:18)
11 People's Choice - The Big Hurt (3:28)
12 The O'Jays - et Me Make Love To You (3:40)
13 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Wake Up Everybody (7:33)
14 The O'Jays - I Love Music (6:53)
15 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Don't Leave Me This Way (6:06)
16 Archie Bell & The Drells - Let's Groove (3:07)
17 The O'Jays - Livin' For The Weekend (6:36)
CD4
01 The Manhattans - Kiss And Say Goodbye (4:31)
02 Dee Dee Sharp - I'm Not In Love (5:17)
03 Lou Rawls - You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine (4:29)
04 The Spinners - The Rubberband Man (3:36)
05 The Jacksons - Enjoy Yourself (3:24)
06 Jean Carn - Free Love (4:08)
07 Teddy Pendergrass - I Don't Love You Anymore (4:00)
08 Lou Rawls - See You When I Git There (4:28)
09 The O'Jays - Use Ta Be My Girl (4:04)
10 Teddy Pendergrass - Close The Door (5:28)
11 McFadden & Whitehead - Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now (7:03)
12 The Jones Girls - ou Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else (4:34)
13 The Stylistics - Hurry Up This Way Again (3:38)
14 Teddy Pendergrass - Love T.K.O. (5:03)
15 Leon Huff - I Ain't Jivin', I'm Jammin' (5:58)
16 Deniece Williams - It's Gonna Take A Miracle (4:13)
17 Patti Labelle - If Only You Knew (4:45)
When I reviewed two compilation CDs based around the R&B hits and rarities of Philadelphia International earlier this year, I described the label and two of its primary architects, songwriting/production team Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, as "upwardly mobile" and "crossover-friendly". Typically, those are code words used to describe bourgie schmaltz carefully concocted to avoid scaring white folks, the kind of music business plan that irked everyone from George Clinton and James Brown on down; Fred Wesley, who played trombone for both of them, famously quipped that Philadelphia International "put the bow tie on funk." It's a quote brought up during an interview in the last pages of the 60-plus-page booklet that accompanies the Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia box set, and it's answered by Gamble and Huff, after a bit of laughter, as though it were strictly a question of arrangement techniques.]
[i]But in that same booklet is a brief essay written by Ph.D. and Grammy-nominated writer Gerald Early. He also picks up on the upwardly mobile nature of the Philly sound and sees something different than the compromise the label had been accused of: In the context of a metropolis that he remembered in 1971 as "broken, dirty, crime-ridden, corrupt, dysfunctional, a city that seemed to be coming to the end of itself," Early emphasizes how alive and inspirational this music sounded during this tense, divisive period in Philly history. It's probably the most revealing and most on-point assessment of the 16 years of history included in this box set, which starts with the charging piano-driven blue-eyed soul of the Soul Survivors' 1967 traffic-jam metaphor "Expressway (to Your Heart)" and concludes on Patti LaBelle's smooth but elegiac 1983 ballad "If Only You Knew". Here you have a style and philosophy that connected on ground-level emotional themes-- duplicity and betrayal (the O'Jays' "Back Stabbers"), familial bonds (the Intruders' "I'll Always Love My Mama"), feeling helpless in the face of constant hardships (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "Bad Luck")-- combined with opulent orchestration that made high-class, post-Mantovani symphonic arrangements into populist FM radio fare you could listen to in a laundromat.
There's 71 tracks on Love Train, and with rare exceptions, they all fall somewhere between good and crucial. Two groups appear on this collection with a well-deserved frequency: both the O'Jays and Teddy Pendergrass-- as the lead singer for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and as a solo artist-- make 11 each, and as the label's most popular artists and prolific hitmakers they personified the assertive consciousness that the label thrived on, through both sharp cynicism ("For the Love of Money") and call-to-arms idealism ("Wake Up Everybody"). Then there's the obligatory appearances from Philadelphia's top-notch session band MFSB, who saw "Love Is the Message" catch fire in discos 97 miles northeast to become the "National Anthem of Brooklyn" and turned "T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)" into the sound of every city in America as the theme to "Soul Train"; a non-charting cover that puts a lively jolt into Sly & the Family Stone's famously muted "Family Affair" is thrown in as an interesting deep cut.
You also get the hits that'd become prototypes for disco, like the Blue Notes' 1973 single "The Love I Lost", famous for the Earl Young-hewn, hi-hat-driven 4/4 drum pattern that would completely engulf nearly all of pop music within five years and give rise to the likes of McFadden & Whitehead's anti-malaise anthem "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now". And there are the hits that stand out on their own merits, historical or otherwise, from the suave guiltiness of Billy Paul's extramarital affair tale "Me and Mrs. Jones" to the Three Degrees' lonely yet upbeat "When Will I See You Again" to the Jones Girls' smoky mid-tempo disco-funk classic "You're Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else", a must-hear if you've ever speculated as to what'd happen if Chic and Giorgio Moroder crossed paths in 1978.
But this compilation isn't just about Philadelphia International. There's a decent amount of material on Love Train that precedes the official 1971 formation of the label, and the real intent of the box is to showcase almost everything that made the city into an R&B capital in the late 60s and kept it that way through the 70s and early 80s. Thom Bell's pre-PIR production work with Cameo and Avco was an important benchmark for the label's symphonic soul opulence of the ensuing decade, and even if his push towards deeper layers of orchestrally upholstered sweetness produced the occasional bucket of treacle (the Stylistics' "I'm Stone in Love With You" is not recommended for those with blood sugar disorders), it also resulted more frequently in a staggeringly luxurious beauty, typified by the Delfonics' majestic "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)". And there's a number of Gamble/Huff-abetted appearances by Atlantic artists not typically associated with the Philly sound that nonetheless benefit from it, including Dusty Springfield (the title track to the underappreciated Dusty in Memphis follow-up A Brand New Me), the Spinners (the timeless song of unrequited faithfulness "I'll Be Around"), and Wilson Pickett (underrepresented by Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia hit "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You"; leaving out the funk monster "Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9" is one of this box's few but cruel omissions).
Philadelphia International's cultural cachet still hasn't completely caught up to the reverent immortalization of Motown or Stax; when writers blame a label for facilitating a crossover mentality and watering down soul for the whitebread masses, that kind of reputation can be hard to shake. But successive movements have found a lot of worth in this music and helped prove how well it stands up: Of the 71 songs on this collection, at least 25 of them found additional life in later decades as hip-hop and contemporary R&B samples. For those intrigued by those sonic building blocks, Love Train will prove to be exhaustively surprising and inspiring, especially in context with its interview and essay-strewn booklet of liner notes, which reads like a miniaturized edition of cratedigger/soul-geek bible Wax Poetics. And for R&B aficionados of all ages, this set does an admirable job of reevaluating and reaffirming this sound as something more than just gussied-up soul: Behind that bow tie was a jugular vein pulsing with the beat of a new, aspirational inner-city America.
CD1
01 Soul Survivors - Expressway (To Your Heart) (2:21)
02 The Delfonics - La-La Means I Love You (3:22)
03 The Intruders - Cowboys To Girls (2:40)
04 Jerry Butler - Hey, Western Union Man (2:42)
05 The Delfonics - Ready Or Not Here I Come (Can't Hide From Love) (2:03)
06 Jerry Butler - Only The Strong Survive (2:38)
07 The Delfonics - Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time) (3:24)
08 Dusty Springfield - Brand New Me (2:27)
09 Wilson Pickett - Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You (2:50)
10 The Ebonys - You're The Reason Why (3:05)
11 Joe Simon - Drowning In The Sea of Love (3:23)
12 The Stylistics - I'm Stone In Love With You (3:23)
13 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - I Miss You (8:40)
14 The O'Jays - Back Stabbers (3:08)
15 The O'Jays - Sunshine (3:45)
16 The Spinners - I'll Be Around (3:13)
17 Johnny Williams - Slow Motion (Pt. 1) (3:00)
18 Billy Paul - Me And Mrs. Jones (4:48)
19 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - If You Don't Know Me By Now (3:29)
20 The Futures - Love Is Here (4:59)
CD2
01 The O'Jays - Love Train (3:00)
02 The Stylistics - Break Up To Make Up (4:00)
03 MFSB - Family Affair (4:25)
04 The Ebonys - It's Forever (4:32)
05 The O'Jays - Time To Get Down (2:55)
06 The Manhattans - There's No Me Without You (3:39)
07 The Intruders - I'll Always Love My Mama (6:39)
08 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - The Love I Lost (6:25)
09 The Intruders - I Wanna Know Your Name (5:51)
10 The Three Degrees - Dirty Ol' Man (3:06)
11 The O'Jays - Put Your Hands Together (4:09)
12 Billy Paul - Thanks For Saving My Life (3:00)
13 The Spinners - Mighty Love (4:59)
14 William DeVaughn - Be Thankful For What You Got (Pt. 1) (3:26)
15 The O'Jays - For The Love of Mone (7:23)
16 The Trammps - Where Do We Go From Here (3:46)
17 MSFB (Featuring The Three Degrees) - T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia) (5:49)
CD3
01 The Spinners (Featuring Dionne Warwick) - Then Came You (3:59)
02 MFSB (Featuring The Three Degrees) - Love Is The Message (6:39)
03 The Three Degrees - When Will I See You Again (3:01)
04 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Where Are All My Friends (3:22)
05 Bunny Sigler - Picture Us (2:37)
06 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Bad Luck (6:31)
07 The O'Jays - Give The People What They Want (4:14)
08 Billy Paul - Billy's Back Home (4:32)
09 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (Featuring Sharon Paige) - Hope That We Can Be Together Soon (3:41)
10 People's Choice - Do It Any Way You Wanna (3:18)
11 People's Choice - The Big Hurt (3:28)
12 The O'Jays - et Me Make Love To You (3:40)
13 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Wake Up Everybody (7:33)
14 The O'Jays - I Love Music (6:53)
15 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Don't Leave Me This Way (6:06)
16 Archie Bell & The Drells - Let's Groove (3:07)
17 The O'Jays - Livin' For The Weekend (6:36)
CD4
01 The Manhattans - Kiss And Say Goodbye (4:31)
02 Dee Dee Sharp - I'm Not In Love (5:17)
03 Lou Rawls - You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine (4:29)
04 The Spinners - The Rubberband Man (3:36)
05 The Jacksons - Enjoy Yourself (3:24)
06 Jean Carn - Free Love (4:08)
07 Teddy Pendergrass - I Don't Love You Anymore (4:00)
08 Lou Rawls - See You When I Git There (4:28)
09 The O'Jays - Use Ta Be My Girl (4:04)
10 Teddy Pendergrass - Close The Door (5:28)
11 McFadden & Whitehead - Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now (7:03)
12 The Jones Girls - ou Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else (4:34)
13 The Stylistics - Hurry Up This Way Again (3:38)
14 Teddy Pendergrass - Love T.K.O. (5:03)
15 Leon Huff - I Ain't Jivin', I'm Jammin' (5:58)
16 Deniece Williams - It's Gonna Take A Miracle (4:13)
17 Patti Labelle - If Only You Knew (4:45)
When I reviewed two compilation CDs based around the R&B hits and rarities of Philadelphia International earlier this year, I described the label and two of its primary architects, songwriting/production team Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, as "upwardly mobile" and "crossover-friendly". Typically, those are code words used to describe bourgie schmaltz carefully concocted to avoid scaring white folks, the kind of music business plan that irked everyone from George Clinton and James Brown on down; Fred Wesley, who played trombone for both of them, famously quipped that Philadelphia International "put the bow tie on funk." It's a quote brought up during an interview in the last pages of the 60-plus-page booklet that accompanies the Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia box set, and it's answered by Gamble and Huff, after a bit of laughter, as though it were strictly a question of arrangement techniques.]
[i]But in that same booklet is a brief essay written by Ph.D. and Grammy-nominated writer Gerald Early. He also picks up on the upwardly mobile nature of the Philly sound and sees something different than the compromise the label had been accused of: In the context of a metropolis that he remembered in 1971 as "broken, dirty, crime-ridden, corrupt, dysfunctional, a city that seemed to be coming to the end of itself," Early emphasizes how alive and inspirational this music sounded during this tense, divisive period in Philly history. It's probably the most revealing and most on-point assessment of the 16 years of history included in this box set, which starts with the charging piano-driven blue-eyed soul of the Soul Survivors' 1967 traffic-jam metaphor "Expressway (to Your Heart)" and concludes on Patti LaBelle's smooth but elegiac 1983 ballad "If Only You Knew". Here you have a style and philosophy that connected on ground-level emotional themes-- duplicity and betrayal (the O'Jays' "Back Stabbers"), familial bonds (the Intruders' "I'll Always Love My Mama"), feeling helpless in the face of constant hardships (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "Bad Luck")-- combined with opulent orchestration that made high-class, post-Mantovani symphonic arrangements into populist FM radio fare you could listen to in a laundromat.
There's 71 tracks on Love Train, and with rare exceptions, they all fall somewhere between good and crucial. Two groups appear on this collection with a well-deserved frequency: both the O'Jays and Teddy Pendergrass-- as the lead singer for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and as a solo artist-- make 11 each, and as the label's most popular artists and prolific hitmakers they personified the assertive consciousness that the label thrived on, through both sharp cynicism ("For the Love of Money") and call-to-arms idealism ("Wake Up Everybody"). Then there's the obligatory appearances from Philadelphia's top-notch session band MFSB, who saw "Love Is the Message" catch fire in discos 97 miles northeast to become the "National Anthem of Brooklyn" and turned "T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)" into the sound of every city in America as the theme to "Soul Train"; a non-charting cover that puts a lively jolt into Sly & the Family Stone's famously muted "Family Affair" is thrown in as an interesting deep cut.
You also get the hits that'd become prototypes for disco, like the Blue Notes' 1973 single "The Love I Lost", famous for the Earl Young-hewn, hi-hat-driven 4/4 drum pattern that would completely engulf nearly all of pop music within five years and give rise to the likes of McFadden & Whitehead's anti-malaise anthem "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now". And there are the hits that stand out on their own merits, historical or otherwise, from the suave guiltiness of Billy Paul's extramarital affair tale "Me and Mrs. Jones" to the Three Degrees' lonely yet upbeat "When Will I See You Again" to the Jones Girls' smoky mid-tempo disco-funk classic "You're Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else", a must-hear if you've ever speculated as to what'd happen if Chic and Giorgio Moroder crossed paths in 1978.
But this compilation isn't just about Philadelphia International. There's a decent amount of material on Love Train that precedes the official 1971 formation of the label, and the real intent of the box is to showcase almost everything that made the city into an R&B capital in the late 60s and kept it that way through the 70s and early 80s. Thom Bell's pre-PIR production work with Cameo and Avco was an important benchmark for the label's symphonic soul opulence of the ensuing decade, and even if his push towards deeper layers of orchestrally upholstered sweetness produced the occasional bucket of treacle (the Stylistics' "I'm Stone in Love With You" is not recommended for those with blood sugar disorders), it also resulted more frequently in a staggeringly luxurious beauty, typified by the Delfonics' majestic "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)". And there's a number of Gamble/Huff-abetted appearances by Atlantic artists not typically associated with the Philly sound that nonetheless benefit from it, including Dusty Springfield (the title track to the underappreciated Dusty in Memphis follow-up A Brand New Me), the Spinners (the timeless song of unrequited faithfulness "I'll Be Around"), and Wilson Pickett (underrepresented by Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia hit "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You"; leaving out the funk monster "Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9" is one of this box's few but cruel omissions).
Philadelphia International's cultural cachet still hasn't completely caught up to the reverent immortalization of Motown or Stax; when writers blame a label for facilitating a crossover mentality and watering down soul for the whitebread masses, that kind of reputation can be hard to shake. But successive movements have found a lot of worth in this music and helped prove how well it stands up: Of the 71 songs on this collection, at least 25 of them found additional life in later decades as hip-hop and contemporary R&B samples. For those intrigued by those sonic building blocks, Love Train will prove to be exhaustively surprising and inspiring, especially in context with its interview and essay-strewn booklet of liner notes, which reads like a miniaturized edition of cratedigger/soul-geek bible Wax Poetics. And for R&B aficionados of all ages, this set does an admirable job of reevaluating and reaffirming this sound as something more than just gussied-up soul: Behind that bow tie was a jugular vein pulsing with the beat of a new, aspirational inner-city America.
Soul | Funk | FLAC / APE
As a ISRA.CLOUD's PREMIUM member you will have the following benefits:
- Unlimited high speed downloads
- Download directly without waiting time
- Unlimited parallel downloads
- Support for download accelerators
- No advertising
- Resume broken downloads