Philadelphia seemed an impeccable and unbeatable place for soul acts in the early 1970's. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes and Teddy Pendergrass really delivered on their 1972 debut album. Unsurprisingly, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's production gives the group a great backdrop to sing. This album has much of that soft ballad soul that I crave (like with other artists of the time like The Delfonics, Stylistics, among others), but instead of a falsetto lead, we get the deep, gruffy, emotional, painfully beautiful crooning of Teddy Pendergrass (aka TP), while the rest of the group provides awesome harmony. The 8 1/2 minute opener, "I Miss You" is a sweet ballad to get things started. I love the heavenly chorus and uplifting vibe of "Let Me Into Your World," not only romantic, but also perfect for cruisin,'and the lyrics are poetic, comparing the lady's eyes to a "pot of gold." Realizing now that he has a woman in his life, TP feels the blues fade away and all falling into place on "Yesterday I Had The Blues." "Let It Be You" features a brief falsetto along with TP, and it is another sweet slower mid-tempo burner. "If You Don't Know Me By Now" is agreat slow jam again with goosebump inducing hook harmonizing. As a whole, we have here, a true soul album chock full of beautiful soul and no pop filler at all, all sweet balads. Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes is one classy and stylish group on top of it all. They have powerful lyrics backed by heavenly melodies; this has to be one of the best early Gamble and Huff produced albums. Thank god it is available on cd now and available to download for younger generation guys like me to enjoy and groove to because I am not feeling the RnB game today.

I agree with the other reviewer I don't understand why it took so long to come out with this album on cd format. Truly one of Philadelphia Internationals best albums. My favorite songs are "I Miss You", "Be For Real", and "Yesterday I Had The Blues". To be honest you can listen to the whole album straight through. Teddy Pendergrass is one my top five favorite singers all time. He really knows how to belt some songs out and express himself with that exellent baritone voice of his. The singers of the sixties and seventies really knew how to distinguish themslves from one another as opposed to these here today gone tomorrow singers and artist in general of today. Most of todays artist artist all sound the same and sing in the same lame ol second tenor voice as opposed to being distinctive such as Pendergrass, David Ruffin,Eddie Levert,Marvin Gaye,L.J. Reynolds,Barry White,Luther Vandross,Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder. Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff really knew how to write and produce some outstanding material. They also had help arranging song with the great Bobby Martin and Thom Bell, and some of the members of MFSB. This was a time when it actually took creativity, camraderie and great live or housebands to supply the superb instrumental backing tracks. All in all to say the least this album along with the other great albums by PIR in during that time and in the near future were magnificent. Now all the label heads have to do is release the other two albums by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes (1973's Black & Blue and 1975's To Be True). Sony get it done and holla at me soon!!

Hard to believe it took until 2004 for somebody to release Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes first album featuring Teddy Pendergrass. This features some classic stuff like "I Miss You", "Be For Real" and of course "If You Don't Know Me By Now". "Yesterday I Had The Blues" is also worthy of your time. The other 3 songs are average tracks, but not bad by any means. The liner notes are okay, but hardly tell the story of the album or the group's history. Still, considering that Melvin's catalog has been anthologized to death, it's good to get an original album in print. Now that we have their first and last with Teddy (Wake Up Everybody) in print, there's hope that 2nd and 3rd albums will be next.