Vinyl Voyage Radio

K-Tel was famous in the 70s and 80s for producing compilation albums with such memorable titles as Super Bad ,  Right On and Music Machine .  However, K-Tel was not the first to do this.  Before K-Tel, there was Master Seal. Master Seal was one of several companies in the 1950s to produce budget compilation albums, sold mostly through dime stores, such as Woolworths.  8 Top Hits was the title often sold by Master Seal and often featured young people either dancing or singing on the album cover.  Unlike K-Tel, however, Master Seal did not sell compilation albums with original artists.  They re-recorded the music with a sound-alike band.  Although there was an effort to make the tracks sound like the originals, often the results were laughable. I have an 8 Top Hits from 1957.  Where I got it, I am not sure.  It features several popular songs from the time, including the hit "Little Darlin'."   You know "Little Darlin'."  I...

The album cover has a gritty, urban look.  It resembles a graffitied wall with "Super Bad" apparently spray-painted across the cover. Yes, this is K-Tel's foray into the realm of blaxploitation. The songs are soul and funk classics---mainstream music, really.  Nothing unusual there.  However, the album is not necessarily only about the music....it is about an image.  Released in 1973 at the hight of the popularity of blaxploitation cinema, K-Tel is clearly trying to capture a certain "image" about the music.  Gone is the shouting white announcer in the commercial and in his place is a deep-voiced African-American DJ who extolls the songs as "soul-sational." This is a surprisingly good album.  And, unlike many K-Tel compilations that tend to focus more on the current hits of the day, this album has songs that span four years.  So what you have is a great sampling of music from the soul and funk genre of the early 70s.  There'...