Hell Up in Harlem [Original Soundtrack]

1974’s Hell Up In Harlem soundtrack featured an all-star session cast including Motown bass-supremo James Jameson, Joe Sample on keys and Dennis Coffey on guitar. Breaking with blaxploitation convention, Hell Up In Harlem is mostly made up of songs with only two instrumental pieces (and an instrumental version of the title track). Starr’s distinctive half-rough/half-sweet voice is expertly backed up by a Mizell brothers production that is a little rawer than their usual smooth and sophisticated vibe. If it wasn’t a soundtrack, Hell Up In Harlem would work perfectly well as a standalone artist album and was definitely a career highlight for Starr.

It almost feels like a huge wasted opportunity that the Mizell Brothers weren’t asked to do more soundtracks back in the ’70s, since their work with Blue Note stars like Bobbi Humphrey and Donald Byrd revealed a major knack for dynamic, evocative arrangements that were up there with the best that jazz-rooted contemporaries like Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock could muster. The sequel to Larry Cohen’s Fred “The Hammer” Williamson actioner Black Caesar swaps out the original’s J.B.’s-powered James Brown numbers for Edwin Starr belting over Fonce Mizell / Freddie Perren-arranged blaxploitation opulence (with Larry Mizell contributing synths). And it’s an even bigger shame that Motown didn’t do more to promote Starr’s swan song for the label, because the cold-sweating title cut, the feline slink of “Easin’ In,” and the colossus-of-swag anthem “Big Papa” are some of his career-best performances on an album orchestrated to show him at full power.