The short-lived first incarnation of the JB's, with future Parliament-arian bassist Bootsy Collins, brother Catfish Collins on guitar, Jabo Starks and/or Clyde Stubblefield on drums, this is the edgiest, meanest, leanest lineup maestro James Brown ever assembled, and the music they made in this single year is still among the freshest, most soul-stirring funk on earth decades later. Check out James's pleas for tenor saxophonist Robert McCollough to "blow me some 'Trane, brother!" Expansive, incisive. This compilation, prepared and ideally notated by Harry Weinger and one-time JB manager Alan Leeds, is so full of groove it could doubtless sub for a faulty pacemaker. --John Corbett