Growing up in the 1970's, I was fortunate that I was exposed not just to the explosion of "AOR" radio that brought the good, bad, and ugly of rock. Living with WPIX, the large independent television station out of New York, I also got, on Saturday afternoons, a good dose of Soul Train. Because of this, I was in High School before I realized that there was a conscious effort on the part of record companies to market funk/soul to a primarily African-American audience, segregating the music that had tried so hard to destroy the racial divide in America.
As a result of my own naivete, I was exposed to some of the best music ever. I have highlighted some it already - P-Funk, James Brown, Isaac Hayes - and will do others at another date. Right now, though, I just want to bring up . . . Curtis Mayfield.
I was physically pained when Rod Stewart, with Jeff Beck, covered this song back in the 1980's, "People Get Ready" (yes, that's Taylor Dayne on backing vocals):
Here he is in 1972, with "Keep On Keeping On":
I always hated the term "blacksploitation" as a way to reference African-American genre films from the 1970's. Like all types of films, some were good, some were just blah, and some were awful. One of the one's that was more than a little good, not quite very good, but still better than many films one can name, is Superfly. Curtis Mayfield did the title song:
