Track Listing

1. I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun
2. Reasons
3. Every Time He Comes Around
4. Young Willing And Able
5. Inside My Love
6. Memory Lane
7. Love Hurts
8. Here We Go
9. You Take My Breath Away
10. Strange Affair
11. Take A Little Trip
12. I'm A Woman
13. Lovin' You
14. Les Fleurs
15. Light My Fire

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15077 in Music
• Released on: 2001-09-17
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Near perfect, angel
A well-chosen anthology spanning Minnie Ripperton's most creative and musically satisfying decade from the late sixties onwards.

Minnie is best known for LOVIN' YOU - which is rightly included here as, despite a little over-familiarity, it still stands as a deeply affecting performance of a truly great song. But evidently there is much, much more to Minnie than that.

As LOVIN' YOU demonstrates, Minnie was in possession of a breathtaking multi-octave vocal range. However, this collection also testifies to the sheer quality of her songwriting and breadth of musical vision. Minnie's talent clearly included the ability to co-produce her own songs, choose the best producers and musicians to work with and the refusal to waste her vocal talent on throwaway material (a frequent flaw in so many performers in this field). It is true that this is an album of mostly sweet, mid-tempo soul rather than out and out dance floor material but it really does encompass most of the enduring sounds and textures of 1970s Black American music.

The price of the album is justified on its own for the pair of Charles Stepney productions (LES FLEUR and I AM THE BLACK GOLD OF THE SUN), which are two achingly beautiful acoustic-psychedelic soul masterpieces dating from the very late '60s. Both were revived much later on by DJ Gilles Peterson and later covered by 4 Hero and Masters At Work (as Nu Yorican Soul).

You could also say the same for the much-sampled soul-jazz of INSIDE MY LOVE from 1975, which, like so many of Minnie's songs is just incredibly yet understatedly sexy. It was co-written and produced by Minnie and will also be familiar to anybody who has seen Quentin Tarrantino's "Jackie Brown". MEMORY LANE, from 1979, is very much in the same rich vein as Curtis Mayfield's best `70s output and is probably my favourite tune on the whole album (and, as I recall, a big Norman Jay tune from the days of his Original Musiquarium show on KISS FM). Another highlight is YOUNG, WILLING AND ABLE, with its jazzy, Roy Ayers-like feel.

In all, there are 15 tracks - with no fillers as far as I am concerned. As you will learn from Dean Rudland's excellent sleeve notes, in 1979 Minnie died tragically young at the age of just 31. This album is a fantastic tribute to her amazing, enduring talent and is ultimately a great collection of top quality soul music.

6di8o
A great voice, certainly, but there's way too many slow, unaffecting tracks to make this a a spellbinding listen. "Les Fleurs" named this compilation for a reason; it evokes more power than an earthquake, yet has all the beauty of the fields of flowers in the lyrics. "Loving You" is also a mesmerising ballad, and would easily stand up against any pop song you'd care to throw at me. The rest though... a few select cuts make her more than a two-track wonder, but I'm not going to try and hide my disappointment here. When she goes all-out, it's one of the most stunning thing you'll ever hear, yet something (label politics?) kept forcing her back into the world of easy-listening restraint and boredom. 'tis a shame.

Seminal artist sadly no longer with us
If it wasn't for Nuyorican Soul, The Orb and filmwise Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Road Trip, I think I would have missed out on Minnie. She has a truly sexy voice and any album - which has Lovin' You (sampled by the Orb's A Huge Ever Brain...), I am The Black Gold of The Sun (as covered by Nuyorican Soul) and Inside My Love which featured on those aforementioned two films - gets my vote. True class - even if you discount everything else on the album, buy it for the sheer class of these tracks. I have not found any other song like Inside My Love to evoke, yes, such sexiness. Minnie and Jose Feliciano's cover of Light My Fire (well, OK Felicano's) is from where a certain Will Young (allegedly) plundered such an amazing rendition of The Doors' classic. Just buy this CD, if you love wonderful music with beauty and soul.