William DeVaughn Be Thankful For What ...

Sound quality is all over the map for "Be Thankful For What You Got".

LP version (7:11)

I only have the LP verson on one file. It's labeled as being from the CD Be Thankful For What You Got, but I can't verify. It has a nice dynamic range, reasonable EQ, doesn't show any evidence of noise reduction... but still sounds like mud. This must be from an extremely high-generation tape source. It fades from 6:57 to 7:11.

On this file, the opening bongos are mostly in the left channel. I'm not sure if this is correct or not.

LP version faded early (3:20, 3:44, 5:45)

Most of the versions on CD are early fades of the LP version. These didn't exist when the song was a hit in 1974.

All of the following have the opening bongos mostly in the right channel. Again, I'm not sure if this is correct or not.

Connoisseur Collection UK's 5-CD 100 All Time Classic Dance Hits Of The 1970s (1988) fades from about 5:30 to 5:45.

Ace UK's 2-CD Sampled Vol. 1 (2000) fades from about 3:38 to 3:44.

Rhino's Billboard Top R&B Hits 1974 (1990) fades from about 3:07 to 3:20. The song sounds fantastic here - great dynamic range, nice EQ, no evidence of noise reduction, and some very clean-sounding source tapes. There's a digital clone on Rhino's Didn't It Blow Your Mind Vol. 12 (1991), which shortens the fade by a tiny amount. The analog transfer for Didn't It Blow Your Mind Vol. 12 is also used on:

• Time-Life's Sounds Of The Seventies Vol. 32 AM Pop Classics (1993)
• Time-Life's Solid Gold Soul Vol. 9 1974 (1996) - differently-EQ'd digital clone
• Time-Life's 2-CD Body Talk Vol. 14 Love And Tenderness (1997) - digitally identical
• Time-Life's 2-CD Solid Gold Funk (2001) - digitally identical to Sounds Of The Seventies Vol. 32 AM Pop Classics

45 edit (3:25)

I didn't spend too much time reverse-engineering the 45 edit, but it looks like there are at least two edits - one at 2:10 and one at 3:14. I'm not 100% confident in these edit locations; I just wanted to see if there's a significant difference between the 45 edit and the LP version - there is.

I have the 45 edit on Time-Life's 2-CD Body And Soul Vol. 11 Night Whispers (1999), where it sounds very nice. There's a digital clone on Time-Life's Solid Gold Soul Vol. 30 Superbad (2001), which is digitally exactly 2 dB louder. Both of these have the opening bongos mostly in the left channel.

The 45 version also appears on Disky UK's Beat Goes On Vol. 7 (1997) and Disky UK's 8-CD Wow That Was The 70's (1999), both of which sound muddier than the Time-Life discs. Both of these have the opening bongos mostly in the right channel.

1981 rerecording

William DeVaughn rerecorded his slow-jam soul song as straight-up disco in 1981. That version turns up on Hip-O's 2-CD Best Disco In Town Vol. 3 (1995). Avoid, unless you like that sort of thing.