Various – Super Funk Is Back: Rare & Classic Funk 1968-77

The Various Super Funk Is Back: Rare & Classic Funk 1968-77 vinyl you’re looking at is volume 5 in Beat Goes Public’s long-running Super Funk series, catalogued as BGP2 183, and it is comfortably the deepest the series has dug yet. Twenty-one tracks, a handful of them previously unreleased on wax, the rest ranging from genuinely obscure to outright eBay-rarity territory. This is not a repackaging of familiar names. This is the real work.

Why Various Super Funk Is Back: Rare & Classic Funk 1968-77 Vinyl Hits Different

BGP has always had strong curatorial instincts with this series, but earlier volumes leaned closer to the recognisable end of the underground spectrum. Volume 5 abandons that caution entirely. The track selection here pulls from a corner of late-60s and 70s funk where the singles pressed small, distributed locally, and vanished. Artists like Smithstonian, 87th Off Broadway, Hebrew Rogers, La May and Company, and Lorenzo Holden are not names casual funk fans will clock immediately. That is precisely the point. These are cuts that serious collectors have been hunting across decades, and BGP has assembled them into a single cohesive listen that makes a genuine argument for why the underground sometimes outran the mainstream on pure grit and invention.

The Tracks and What Makes This Comp Work

The 21-track sequence covers a wide range of regional flavours and approaches within the funk idiom, running from rougher, rawer single-side obscurities to slightly more polished but equally hard-to-source cuts. Alvin Cash’s 1970 funky remake of “Twine Time” is a highlight with some name recognition behind it, and Dyke and the Blazers contribute a track that holds its own alongside their better-known output. But the real density here is in the deep cuts: Big Daddy Green’s “Who Done It? Who Drained The Pool?”, Smokey Wilson’s “Low Rider (Deuce & A Quarter)”, the two-part “I Got Hurt” from The Phillips Brothers, and The Eternal Flames’ “Hi Off Life” represent exactly the kind of material that makes this volume stand apart. Several tracks appear here on vinyl for the first time, which is not a claim BGP makes carelessly.

The Pressing and Who Should Own This

This is a Beat Goes Public LP release on their BGP imprint, a label with a strong track record for sympathetic reissue work on soul, funk, and rare groove material. The catalog number is BGP2 183. If you already own volumes in the Super Funk series, this one does not duplicate the work of its predecessors. It extends the series into genuinely new territory. If you are coming to it fresh, it stands on its own as a strong introduction to what the funk underground was producing between 1968 and 1977. For collectors who value rarity of source material over familiarity of name, this pressing delivers across all 21 tracks.

Tracklist

1. SMITHSTONIAN: JUST SITTING
2. 87TH OFF BROADWAY: CAN'T GET ENOUGH
3. THE DIPLOMATS: SHE'S THE ONE
4. THE ETERNAL FLAMES: HI OFF LIFE
5. MILES GRAYSON: HOME BREW
6. THE UNIQUES: GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE
7. THE PHILLIPS BROTHERS: I GOT HURT PAT 1
8. THE PHILLIPS BROTHERS: I GOT HURT PT 2
9. LEE BERNARD: TURN AROUND AND GO
10. DYKE & THE BLAZERS: LET A WOMAN BE A WOMAN-LET A MAN BE
11. ALVIN CASH: TWINE TIME
12. THE EXPLOSIONS: FACE TO FACE
13. JACKIE WILSON: SHAKE A LEG
14. HEBREW ROGERS: CAN'T BUY SOUL
15. SMOKEY WILSON: LOW RIDER (DEUCE & A QUARTER)
16. BIG DADDY GREEN: WHO DONE IT? WHO DRAINED THE POOL
17. THE MELLO MATICS: MOTHER POPCORN
18. THE PHILLIPS BROHERS: LITTLE BOY BLUE
19. JEANETTE JONES: YOU'D BE GOOD FOR ME
20. LORENZO HOLDEN: HOLD ON
21. LA MAY: FREE THE SOUL MAN