KC and the Sunshine Band never did get too many props from the soul crowd. My guess is that they dared to have pop hits which, over time, have somehow become dismissed through over-familiarity. However as this 2-CD, 41 track retrospective (containing all the tracks on the band’s five TK albums) shows, there was much more to the outfit than ‘That’s The Way I Like It’. The band, of course, were essentially Harry Casey and Rick Finch – who by a mix of fate and coincidence both ended up working in Henry Stone’s famous Miami studio. They collaborated on all kinds of projects – including the seminal ‘Rock Your Baby’ – before recording themselves as KC and the Sunshine Junkanoo Band. Thankfully, the Junkanoo was soon dropped and the band began to score their hits. It’s fair to say that taken in isolation stuff like ‘That’s The Way I Like It’, ‘Please Don’t Go’ and ‘Get Down Tonight’ do have a poppy, disco edge but away from the familiar, the band could lay down some gritty southern funk tempered with sweet soul – witness the tightness of ‘Do It Good’ (from the ’74 album of that name) and the rolling gentleness of ‘Ain’t Nothing Wrong’ (from the band’s eponymous ’75 album). In truth, though, we all could do without the throwaway levity of the cover of ‘It’s The Same Old Song’ and in places the pumping bass lines, the breezy brass and the continual exhortations to party become a tad repetitive, but like I said up top, a revealing and (in places) surprising collection.
(BB) 3/5
