Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Band Of Gold - Freda Payne
2. Give Me Just A Little More Time - Chairmen Of The Board
3. Why Can't We Be Lovers - Holland-Dozier, Lamont Dozier
4. Want Ads - The Honey Cone
5. Finder's Keepers - Chairmen Of The Board
6. Westbound #9 - The Flaming Ember
7. Somebody's Been Sleeping In My Bed - 100 Proof Aged In Soul
8. Deeper And Deeper - Freda Payne
9. Working On A Building Of Love - Chairmen Of The Board
10. Women's Love Rights - Laura Lee
11. Stick-Up - The Honey Cone
12. Everything's Tuesday - Chairmen Of The Board
13. She's Not Just Another Woman - The Eighth Day
14. I'm Not My Brother's Keeper - The Flaming Ember
15. Elmo James - Chairmen Of The Board
16. Crumbs Off The Table - The Glass House
17. One Monkey Don't Stop No Show (Pt.1) - Laura Lee
18. Pay To The Piper - Chairmen Of The Board
19. You Got To Crawl (Before You Walk) - The Eighth Day
20. You've Got Me Dangling On A String - Chairmen Of The Board
21. Rip Off - Laura Lee
22. The Day I Found Myself - The Honey Cone
23. Bring The Boys Home - Freda Payne
24. I'm On My Way To A Better Place - Chairmen Of The Board

Disc 2:

1. Patches - Chairmen Of The Board
2. Love Factory - Eloise Laws
3. That's Love - The Hi-Lites
4. While You're Out Looking For Sugar - The Honey Cone
5. I Shall Not Be Moved - Barrino Brothers
6. Taster Of The Honey (Not The Keeper Of The Bee) - the Jones Girls
7. Wanting You - Earl English
8. Can't Get Enough Of You - Tyrone Edwards
9. Cherish What Is Dear To You - Freda Payne
10. I'm So Glad - Brian Holland
11. V.I.P. - Scherrie Payne
12. Everything Good Is Bad - 100 Proof Aged In Soul
13. New Breed Kinda Woman - Holland-Dozier
14. Try On My Love For Size - Chairmen Of The Board
15. Let Love Grow - Brenda Holloway
16. You Made Me Over - Melvin Davis
17. I Don't See Me In Your Eyes Anymore - Ty Hunter
18. Something New About You - The Silent Majority
19. Your Love Controls Me - the Jones Girls
20. Mama's Little Baby (Loves Lovin') - Brotherly Love
21. The Music Box - New Play, Ruth Copeland
22. Don't Leave Me Starving For Your Love (Part 1) - Holland-Dozier
23. You Brought The Joy - Freda Payne
24. (I've Been A Winner, I've Been A Loser) I've Been In Love - Smith Connection

Disc 3:

1. Gimme Shelter - Ruth Copeland
2. Life And Death - Chairmen Of The Board
3. Come In Out Of The Rain - Parliament
4. The Unhooked Generation - Freda Payne
5. Bump Your Lady (Pts. 1 & 2) - Natural High
6. Free Your Mind - The Politicians
7. Bar-B-Q-Ribs - Raynel Wynglas
8. Sunday Morning People - Harrison Kennedy
9. Time Gonna Change Everything - Lucifer
10. Sittin' On A Bomb (Waiting For The Hurt To Come) - Lee Charles
11. I Need It Just As Bad As You - Laura Lee
12. Stop The World & Let Me Off - The Flaming Ember
13. Hanging On (To) A Memory - Chairmen Of The Board
14. I'm Bugging Your Phone - Smith Connection
15. Cheba - The Eighth Day
16. Mother Misery's Favorite Child - Freda Payne
17. Chairmen Of The Board - Chairmen Of The Board
18. I Call My Baby Pussycat - Parliament
19. I Got It (Pt.1) - New York Port Authority
20. Sliced Tomatoes - The Just Brothers

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66225 in Music
• Released on: 2008-02-26
• Number of discs: 3
• Format: Box set
• Running time: 231 minutes

Customer Reviews

The best and lots of the rest...
When Holland-Dozier-Holland escaped from Berry Gordy's Motown and started their own "thang" the eventual result was Invictus Records. This collection shows what mixed results that really had.

Sometimes the magic was still flowing like wine: many of the Chairmen of The Board tracks, and Lamont Dozier's "Why Can't We Be Lovers" being evidence for this, listen to the latter a couple of times to get the groove. However, sometimes the magic was almost nonexistent - pick unknown tracks in this collection for evidence of that, the Brotherly Love track for example. The musicianship is almost always great, but the material and the arrangements often fail to sparkle.

So, this collection is a "warts and all" retrospective of Invictus' output. It includes pretty much all the hits (actual hits and turntable hits). In that latter category are the excellent, but largely un-feted, "While You're Out Looking for Sugar" by the Honeycone, and "Westbound No. 9" by Flaming Ember. Also "Somebody's Been Sleeping" by 100 Proof Aged In Soul makes a welcome appearance here complete with its strange portentous intro (often omitted from compilation re-isues).

All the "Chairmen..." hits are here, and have been processed well, restoring the immense power these tracks had on Vinyl, but often lacked in various CD re-issues since (I always wondered how engineers managed to make "Give Me Just A little More Time" sound so feeble on those CDs!)

The label's signature global smash hit, Freda Payne's "Band of Gold", is here too, but what's this?? Freda's superb, but uncharted, version of "I Shall Not be Moved" is replaced by the Barrino Brothers version - which is, IMHO, not a patch...

In fact, having listened to the whole 3 discs, I would venture to say you could probably just keep disc 1 and discard the other two without TOO much regret. Sure, there is good stuff on discs 2 & 3 ("Try on my Love For Size" by the Chairmen... and the aformentioned Honeycone track) but the cream of this collection has definitely risen to the top.

So, should you buy this? Well, if you're an avid soul/motown fan and want to make a thorough exploration of the Invictus story, then you will find a great deal to enjoy in this box, but if you're only interested in the very best hit soul music, then probably there are better products with more concentrated soul goodness on them than this.

Invictus Soul Box Set
This is real 'treasure trove' and higly entertaining as the style is one that is so familiar but which sounds fresh and new as you don't really know many of the songs. This stands comparison with any Motown compilation of the 1960's. Full of foot tapping, feel good stuff but with more throbbing bass than most of the earlier Tamla stuff could muster. Although many of the tracks were never UK 'hits', there is very little to grumble about on this 3 disc set.

the good stuff
I buy loads of random soul compilations and most of the time it's the same kind of thing, still great but nothing new. This compilation however is absolute quality. I'm not really sure if this material has appeared before on other compilations, but I've never came across most of these tracks. The whole collection is packed full of great tunes and there are very few, if any, that are doubtful. 68 tracks from feelgood tunes to soulful love songs, highly recommended.