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2012 repress; reissue of a long out-of-print 2005 Z Records fave. Disco got soul! As all fans of the music know, disco was a musical umbrella under which so much was possible. There were no restrictions on style or tempo -- it had to have a beat for dancing... other than that, the only other prerequisite was that it had to be DISCO. Its early commercial successes -- records by George McCrae, Gloria Gaynor, Disco Tex and Andrea True were as varied as you like, but there's no denying where their collective heart lay. Towards the late '70s, disco became a marketing man's dream and virtually every other musical form received the disco treatment, usually with disastrous results. A dedicated contingent were, however, more interested in the R&B aspects of the music than its Euro leanings and many disco-influenced soul records appeared (mainly from the U.S.) alongside Euro-disco and pop-disco. The northern and modern soul scenes in the UK were generally good for filtering out a certain style of soulful disco. Records favored on these scenes were invariably more song-oriented, with an emphasis on quality vocals. The more soulful and stylish, the better. On The Soul Of Disco, UK crate-diggers Joey Negro and Sean P. uncover some of the lesser-known, but equally deserving tracks from the disco days, with original 12" versions and some exclusive DJ re-edits by Joey Negro himself. With the exception of one semi-instrumental, the tracks here are largely bound by an accessible earthiness, rawness, funkiness, and, in the case of a few, downright soulfulness. Disco's influence was such that, of course, it's still shaping music 30 years after it broke into the mainstream. The Soul Of Disco attempts to shine the spotlight on the less obvious side of the genre, for today's listeners... and a few first-timers. This collection spans the years 1976-1982, with an R&B slant and more song-based material, and is intended to show that there were a few more sides to one of the last century's biggest musical phenomena. Tracks by Tenderness, Jesse G, Disco Fox, Eddie Chiba, Aura, Milton Hamilton, Masterforce, Velvet Hammer, Jeany Tracy, Chain Reaction, Eastside Connection, King Tutt, Jahneen, Sandi Havens, Letta Mbulu, The Sparkles, Laura Greene, Natural Order, Mahogany, The New Yorkers, Sargeant And Malone, Zebra, and Le Frank O.
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