Search - Various Artists :: T.K. Soul Singles: Best of

Odd compilation but the hits sound good

Music Fan Jeff | San Francisco, CA United States | 04/30/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I must admit that I was puzzled when I first came upon this disc 10 years ago. Nearly all of the biggest hits found here were not even issued on the T.K. label itself but rather other imprints of T.K. founder Henry Stone, such as Alston and Glades. But what seemed stranger to me is that most of the tracks on this disc were far from hits. One listen to many of them reveals why they didn't become better known. Still, there are some prime tracks here, including Timmy Thomas' "Why Can't We Live Together" (in its full length version), Gwen McCrae's "Rockin' Chair", Betty Wright's "Clean Up Woman", Beginning of the End's "Funky Nassau" (either the album version or a special edit of both sides of the 45 put together; I never owned the lp, so I'm not sure), Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do For Love", and Latimore's "Let's Straighten It Out".



The reason for my 4-star rating is that these hits sound better here than they do elsewhere on cd. Whoever mastered this collection (the cd lists the "producer" of the compilation, Paul Klein, but not the remastering engineer) got the midrange of these recordings right, giving them a nice sense of realism; there might be a tad bit of excess in the upper frequencies, but not as much as on Rhino Record's reissues of this same material."