Essential Psychedelic Soul Albums: 1969-1977

Rising from a gospel and folk background (notably singing with Bob Dylan and Barbara Dane), the Chambers Brothers were poised to see the world through their own eyes and ears with 1967’s genre-shattering The Time Has Come. Brewing up a concoction of sludgy blues, psychedelic rock, and fiery soul with a dash of gospel harmonies, the sanctifying Chambers’ magnum opus, “Time Has Come Today” is undoubtedly one of the crowning achievements of the psychedelic era. Originally released as a two-minute single a year before, the hit 11-minute stormer was a fuzz-toned, acid-drenched meditation of changing times that still sounds unbelievably ahead of its time. It’s no wonder it’s gone on to be used constantly in ‘60s documentaries and several top-billing films, even today. 

But there’s more to this overlooked full-length of psychedelic soul than its famous centerpiece — the driving rock-laced soul opener, “All Strung Out Over You,” the Betty Davis-helmed proto funker, “Uptown,” and their covers of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ “People Get Ready” and Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s evergreen “What the World Needs Now Is Love” are just as worthy of your time.

Several months after the success of 1968’s Dance to the Music proved that Sly Stone and company’s optimistic blast of R&B and psych-pop could be radio-friendly without losing its socially conscious bite, the band tightened their songcraft and turned up the guitars on their kaleidoscopic third album, Life. 

An oft-forgotten gem, Life is filled with left-field psychedelic weirdness and eccentricity that serves as a reminder that when Sly & the Family Stone were an active band on the ‘60s music scene, they were thought of as one of the preeminent Bay Area psych-rock bands, next to Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. But they were also funkier and more colorful with their approach. This is abundantly clear from the moment Freddie Stone’s crunchy feedback riffs kick into gear on the opener, “Dynamite,” through Larry Graham’s acid-laden fuzz bass and Sly’s gutsy growls meshing with Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini’s exuberant horns on prime cuts like “M’Lady” and “Love City.” 

The deep cut, “Jane is a Groupee” is a witty backstage groupie saga that predates Rick James’ 1981 classic, “Super Freak,” by two decades. It can be argued that Parliament-Funkadelic and Prince certainly took their cues from shuffling funk romps, “Into My Own Thing,” “Plastic Jim,” and “Fun.”

New Orleans R&B got one of its first immersions into the psychedelic era from well-respected scene vet Mac Rebennack, who took on the elusive voodoo-mystic alter ego of Dr. John Creaux, the Night Tripper for his genre-defying 1968 debut, Gris-Gris.

Building on its witch-doctor atmosphere, the croaking, close-quarter-voiced Dr. John takes listeners on an eccentric, mind-expanding journey, full of chanting female backing vocals, clashes of keyboard riffs, pinprick electric guitar, and booming Afro-Caribbean percussion that’s all bathed in weird spatial studio effects. This album produced several cult favorites, including the melodic Calypso ballad “Mama Roux,” “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya,” “Jump Sturdy,” and the masterful “I Walk on Gilded Splinters.”

By the time Jimi Hendrix, along with R&B session bassist Billy Cox and former Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles, hit New York’s Fillmore East stage on New Year’s Eve 1969, he was already a living legend who had permanently transformed the face of rock music, and his influence over other genres like R&B and jazz was greatly prominent. On the lone live album of his lifetime, Band Of Gypsys, Hendrix explored new avenues he hadn’t ventured so much before, mixing in earthy funk and blues with his electrified acid rock trademarks into looser and extended jams compared with most of his earlier output. 

Hendrix reportedly felt that what he made was underdeveloped, but frankly, it doesn’t feel that way on this powerful recording. Alongside Miles’ thunderous drumming and Cox’s bottom-heavy bass work, Hendrix’s indispensable guitar wizardry slaughters funk-metal workouts like “Who Knows,” the Miles-led “Changes,” and “Power to Love.” “Machine Gun” made this album legendary, though. A soundscape of war, violence, death, and despair is provided by Hendrix’s otherworldly fretwork and Miles’ uncanny, rock-hard ‘rat-tat-tat’ drumming. Almost a quarter of an hour of musical catharsis in which not only the demons of the Vietnam War but those of rioting inner cities are faced as well.

When Motown’s emperors of soul, the Temptations, dipped into the psychedelic era after the exit of their gifted yet troubled lead singer David Ruffin in 1968, it marked one of music’s greatest reinventions ever. As daunting a move it may have been for fans who fancied Ruffin’s unmistakable rasp, the raw, fire-and-brimstone shout of ex-Contours singer Dennis Edwards filled the void perfectly, as did visionary Detroit psych-soul alchemist Norman Whitfield (along with ace songsmith Barrett Strong). 

The Fab Five’s 1970 release, Psychedelic Shack, is undoubtedly one of their finest full-lengths: a masterful slab of funk that pushed the group further into the land of tripped-out lyrics, instrumentation, and heady studio experimentation than ever imagined. The album’s title track was an across-the-board smash, utilizing Whitfield’s Sly Stone-influenced production to the highest degree. From there is a head-turning run of songs full of the fuzz and wah-wah guitar, sound effects, Latin polyrhythmic fire, elongated vamps, and out-there lyrics that came to define not only the Tempts’ psychedelic period but the Black rock movement.

Any one of Funkadelic’s great albums from their Westbound Records period would be appropriate on this list, but the band’s second album, 1970’s Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow was their heaviest showcase of guitar-powered acid rock and soul. Reportedly recorded in one day while the band was on LSD, Funkadelic’s triumph on Free Your Mind… is in its sly conversion of Black gospel musical traditions into full-blown psychedelic rock jams.

The music of the church is subsumed by Funkadelic’s love of the lysergic, their critique of American capitalism, and their celebration of African-American life. Nowhere is this more explicit than on the dissonant, feedback-laden title track, dominated by new member Bernie Worrell’s radio-static keyboard runs and Eddie Hazel’s stellar guitar leads. George Clinton‘s production here is his most abrasive to date — high-end wah-wah, overblown microphones, echo, and drawn-out blurts of feedback — replicating the disorientation they must have felt during this album’s recording session. “Funky Dollar Bill” is another highlight, as is the other Eddie Hazel-dominated track “I Wanna Know If It’s Good to You?,” the psycho blues of “Some More,” and the wickedly groovy “Friday Night, August 14th.”

No matter which side of the P-Funk spectrum you’re on, Parliament’s oddball 1970 debut, Osmium, slips through the cracks. It’s the only entry in the Parliament canon similar to sister band Funkadelic’s early Westbound period, presenting a guitar-driven sound with a loose, ramshackle feel. As always, George Clinton and company’s weird insanity is on full display, as he saw fit to produce a thoroughly eclectic album that works on all fronts. 

One could argue that Osmium was an early precursor to Funkadelic’s criminally underrated 1972 masterpiece, America Eats Its Young, by the sheer number of styles explored. Alongside the hard funk-rock jams, sudden music dropouts, vocal cut-ins, and off-kilter, goofball moments, they go off the deep end with country ditties, epic gospel sing-alongs, and a few quirky bagpipe solos that make this unlike anything else in the Parliament-Funkadelic universe.

When someone brings up albums that defy time, space, and dimension, Minnie Riperton‘s 1970 solo debut masterpiece, Come To My Garden should be mentioned. Breaking away from Chicago psychedelic rock outfit Rotary Connection led Riperton to embark on a solo career. 

Helmed by late great arranger and producer Charles Stepney and songwriter Richard Rudolph, Riperton’s angelic, five-octave voice soared on this elegant debut, marrying ethereal baroque pop arrangements with soul, folk, and jazz elements. Also, her voice seems more in tune with the arrangements and is generally less affected, putting her often multi-tracked whistle register to chilling use as what sounds like a human woodwind instrument or at other times, a songbird. The combination of Stepney’s majestic orchestral arrangements and Ramsey Lewis‘ jazz-inspired rolling grooves just makes this a supreme musical experience with each listen.

Chicago soul master Curtis Mayfield already set a huge precedent in R&B as a founding member of the defining vocal group, the Impressions. He proved to be a prolific songwriter, penning sweet pop-soul classics for not only the Impressions, but for the likes of Jerry Butler, Major Lance, and Maxine Brown, just to name a few. But he also rose as one of music’s all-time great socially conscious visionaries, churning out some of the most poignant and moving anthems that spoke on potent African-American issues of the day. By 1970, this strand in his music morphed into Black Power consciousness, and his first fully realized foray into gritty funk and soul came with his classic 1970 solo debut, Curtis.

The album’s lead single, “(Don’t Worry) If There’s Hell Below We’re All Going to Go” was an incendiary call-to-action, armed with a symphonic, conga-laden groove as fierce and heavy as its apocalyptic twist on racial unity. The stirring messages of “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue” and “Move on Up” leap out of the speakers with strings, chugging guitars, harps, and throbbing Latin polyrhythmic backbeats. Balancing out the album’s message-driven material were the ornate ballads “The Makings of You” and “Give It Up,” as well as a soulful salute to the beauty and strides of Black women, “Miss Black America.”

After being released from their Motown contract in 1968, the Isley Brothers wasted no time moping around. Instead, they formed their own record label, T-Neck, and welcomed younger brothers Ernie and Marvin on guitar and bass, and brother-in-law Chris Jasper on keyboards. They also changed musical direction, veering toward muscular funk, which proved as irresistible to record buyers as it did to dance floors. There’s a good reason why this 1970 gem, Get Into Something is largely sought-after in the Isleys’ catalog among soul enthusiasts and hip-hop crate diggers alike: it’s the funkiest and headiest of their albums. 

Crackling with horn-powered funk juggernauts and tight, head-spinning backbeats that sit alongside James Brown (who went so far as to lift the melody and arrangement of the Isleys’ “Keep on Doin’” for The J.B.‘s “The Grunt” without giving them any credit) and Band of Gypsys-era Jimi Hendrix, this is one hip record from start to finish.

Motown’s psychedelic auteur Norman Whitfield wasn’t a stranger of developing musical vehicles that could fully realize his expansive, subwoofer-caressing epics. One of his earliest outfits, the Undisputed Truth, was a trio of talented vocalists, consisting of Joe Harris, Brenda Evans, and Billie Calvin, that Whitfield introduced to Motown as he was revitalizing the Temptations with his psychedelic soul genius.

The group’s 1971 self-titled debut is notable for their first hit, the brooding “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” a deep slow-burn of a message song on backstabbers that evoked the paranoia and angst of early ‘70s Nixon-era America. Likewise, their eleven-minute take on “Ball of Confusion” (famously done by The Temptations) has a dark, menacing tone to it with its effects-laden vocals and fuzz guitar freakouts all based on a simple three-note bassline. Alongside tackling a slew of covers and hippie-soul cuts, including a unique take on “Aquarius,” they manage to spot the melancholy within the swinging “California Soul,” which was famously done by the underrated soul-jazz great Marlena Shaw.  

Just about everything Minnie Riperton and criminally underrated producer and arranger Charles Stepney put their Midas touch on was a treat. Both were integral members of Rotary Connection, a Chicago-based collective responsible for some of the most beautiful, left-of-center psychedelic soul music known to man before calling it quits in 1974. Originally the brainchild of Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records owner Leonard Chess, the group was Chess/Cadet Records‘ answer to the late ’60s and early ’70s flower power movement. They eventually reconfigured as the New Rotary Connection in 1971 and released their finest moment with Hey, Love. 

Their sixth and final release under the ultimate supervision of Stepney, Hey, Love epitomizes hippie soul in its grandest form, the moment where the group found its focus, overall sound, and direction come to fruition. Of course, the monster of this album is “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun,” a poetic, swinging masterpiece of Black pride that was famously rescued from obscurity when it was covered by Nuyorican Soul in the late ’90s. But this classic gem as a whole beautifully soars from start to finish, with other ethereal, spiritually-driven vocal performances from the great Kitty Haywood, Shirley Wahls, and Dave Scott.

Under the direction of founder and sublime singer-songwriter Eugene Record, the Chi-Lites had been laboring away since 1965, cutting sides for Mercury‘s Blue Rock subsidiary. They hit gold when they moved to the Brunswick label, a nascent Black music powerhouse at the time, known for Jackie Wilson, Barbara Acklin, and Young-Holt. 1971’s (For God Sakes) Give More Power To The People was their second album for the label, and it found the Chicago group in a sweet spot, alternating between the delightful harmony soul they were known for and white-hot chunks of Sly Stone-charged social consciousness.

Of course, the album and the group themselves will be best remembered by the lovelorn classic, “Have You Seen Her?,” which boasts an unusual hook-verse format, where the group sings in their great four-part harmonies and Record takes the role of a heartbroken lover, fixated with the whereabouts of his lost love. Easily one of the downbeat, saddest love records of the early ’70s.

A Los Angeles-based outfit that fused elements of rock, R&B, funk, African, Latin, jazz, and reggae, War was the closest equivalent to other famous multi-ethnic bands like Sly & the Family Stone, Santana, and Mandrill, shattering racial, musical, and cultural barriers with their progressive sound and socially conscious messages. Their second album as a standalone band (fourth overall), 1971’s All Day Music found the band hitting their stride following the departure of Eric Burdon.

More focused and accessible than previous offerings, All Day Music fused sweet soul harmonies with their sinuous, street-laden grooves. From Lee Oskar‘s bluesy harmonica work right into the band’s extended funk workouts, they created a singular musical language. The mellow cool of “All Day Music” evokes a smooth ride down Los Angeles on a hot summer day, whereas the bluesy funk rocker, “Get Down” gets into their sociopolitical side. The lovelorn heart of the album “That’s What Love Will Do” and “There Must Be a Reason” wind down their communal grooves to a sorrowful, acid soul crawl, meditating on the devastating end of a love affair. Of course, this album is best known for the funk hymn that is “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” an in-the-pocket groove highlighted by its thick basslines and edgy subject matter that’s open to interpretation.

Stevie Wonder’s first 1972 release, Music Of My Mind sits at a pivotal place in his unassailable ’70s run of classic albums. It’s the key moment Wonder first embraced the pioneering, room-sized TONTO synthesizer (courtesy of musician-engineering wizards Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff) that would become a sonic trademark over his next three albums. Amongst the heady song structures and free-form experimentation are some of his all-time greatest songs, including the bittersweet, eight-minute mini-epic, “Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You), which blossoms from a tender slow jam to futuristic prog-soul. 

Wonder took several steps further in pushing his ultramodern musical gizmos beyond traditional Motown territory on adventurous cuts like the folky, Beatles-esque “Happier Than the Morning Sun,” which features his multi-layered vocals nodding with a clavinet piano, and the very psychedelic “Girl Blue.” But as a whole, Music Of My Mind was every bit a visionary, forward-thinking classic.

By 1972, Stevie Wonder reestablished himself as a serious album artist with the pioneering masterpieces Music Of My Mind and Talking Book, in which he and Syreeta Wright wrote heartfelt songs that chronicled the highs and lows of their past relationship, like “Love Having You Around,” “Blame It On the Sun,” and “Lookin’ For Another Pure Love.” It was also during this intensely prolific period that Wonder oversaw Wright’s debut album. 

Released in the summer of 1972 on Motown’s subsidiary label, MoWest, Syreeta was a vulnerable song cycle that flaunted the sweet-voiced singer’s far-reaching lyrical and topical prowess. Both she and Wonder concocted a heady, psychedelic soul tapestry that drew from avant-pop, folk, jazz, funk, ambient, and orchestral influences to explore weighty meditations on black identity politics (“Black Maybe”), romantic disillusionment (“Baby Don’t You Let Me Lose This,” “To Know You is to Love You,” and “How Many Days”), and faithful pursuits of love (“Keep Him Like He Is” and “Happiness”).

Shuggie Otis‘ Inspiration Information is the sound of a young man steeped in his singular vision. Three years of seclusion was devoted to its creation, barely noticed and lauded at the time of its release. But now, it’s a much-adored and sought-after cult classic of late-period psychedelic soul. Aside from the horn and string parts, this is very much a DIY one-man-band show, with Otis playing all the instruments as well as producing everything. His excellent guitar work is textured and intricate, along with his programming on the influential Rhythm King MRK-1 drum machine. 

There are plenty of moments that point to Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, without the murk. At other times, there are moments that cross between TONTO-era Stevie Wonder and Bill Withers. But at the core of it all, attempting to classify the music of this masterpiece does it a disservice. It’s of its isolated island, full of intimate, mellow, heady, and sometimes, dead-on funky psychedelic soul that only Otis could come up with.

If there was ever a true standard-bearer for Black rock after Jimi Hendrix’s untimely death, cosmic guitar virtuoso Eddie Hazel checked all of the boxes. As a pivotal figure of the Parliament-Funkadelic collective, Hazel obviously owed a huge debt to Hendrix. But unlike many imitators who could mimic his style but not his substance, he was greatly invested in taking the electric guitar to new avenues untraveled. His 1977 George Clinton-produced solo debut, Game, Dames And Guitar Thangs more than confirms this. 

Backed by a sizable chunk of the P-Funk mob — Billy “Bass” Nelson, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Cordell Mosson, Jerome Brailey, Tiki Fulwood, and the Brides of Funkenstein — Hazel showcases a thrilling smorgasbord of on-the-edge solos and near-perfect, “in the hip pocket” rhythm vamps. Loose covers of  the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” best represent Hazel’s mind-blowingly inventive flailing, while a mostly instrumental tackling of Collins’ “Physical Love” proves he could make his guitar phrasings talk. A hugely overlooked gem of late-period psychedelic soul and funk that deserves more than it gets, just like the master behind it.