Curtis Mayfield: Roots Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		5.0

Curtis Mayfield: Roots Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 16, 2025

Curtis Mayfield's relatively short life was filled with both triumph and tragedy, but in that former department, one of Mayfield's lasting contributions to seventies soul music was Roots, his sophomore effort as a solo artist and one which most definitely did not offer any signs of the oft mentioned "slump" that supposedly inevitably occurs with "second helpings". Mayfield's well publicized penchant for so called "social commentary" may have set him apart from such contemporaries as, say, Isaac Hayes, a comparison that is admittedly not really salient until one considers the mainstream success each of these men had with their forays into soundtracks courtesy of their music for Shaft and Super Fly, respectively.

The album's track list can be seen in the screenshots of the disc menu I've uploaded to accompany this review. This release duplicates the original album and does not include the bonus tracks that were offered as part of Rhino's CD release several years ago.

Curtis Mayfield: Roots Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Once again as with most of the Quadio releases, the video content here is simply the static menu seen in the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review. While this disc offers only two audio codecs (see below), the good news is this disc is authored so that you can toggle between the codecs without the song starting over, per several other releases from WMG and Rhino in particular. This is the one area where WMG / Rhino could arguably up their game by providing consistent authoring of all their audio Blu-ray discs.

Curtis Mayfield: Roots Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Curtis Mayfield: Roots features DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options. The quadraphonic mix is a lot of fun from the get go, with the opening sounds of hootin' and hollerin' as well as heavy breathing (are they doing calisthenics) clearly panning around the soundstage in a clockwise fashion and instantly enveloping the listener with awareness of all four channels. Rather interestingly, a lot of the vocals, even Curtis' leads, tend to be weighted more toward the rear channels quite a bit of the time, so that it can sound like the vocalists are singing in back of the listener. That said, there's good engagement of the front channels as well, typically courtesy of some instrumentation, though you can definitely hear spill from the vocals there if you move closer to the front speakers and away from the rear. Mayfield's plaintive falsetto vocals are nicely prioritized and are never buried by the accompaniment.

Curtis Mayfield: Roots Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As with every Quadio release I've reviewed, there is no on disc supplemental material (and I'm sure some fans will be disappointed about the absence of previously released bonus tracks, though the Quadio discs do tend to duplicate original releases). The insert booklet recreates the original album's cover information, while offering the Quadio standbys of a picture of the boxes holding the master tapes, as well as Rhino's typical verbiage on setup.

Curtis Mayfield: Roots Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of the goofier pleasures of my listening life is finding "unexpected" cover versions of tunes, and in that regard and vis a vis the films that helped bring wider recognition to both Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, some may get a certain demented enjoyment out of the Ray Conniff version of Shaft. I'm fairly certain those are the great Bahler brothers providing the distinctive tenor voices in that version, and for those who like that sound if perhaps not that particular arrangement, some might want to check out the great sixties and seventies work by Hugo Montenegro, who also prominently featured the Bahlers but in a probably more innovative way than Conniff. I spent a good deal of my The Oscar Blu- ray review talking about my love for Percy Faith (Maestro Faith was also mentioned in passing in my Chinatown 4K Blu-ray review), but I'll simply add that Faith may have fared a bit better with his verson of Shaft, and he also did his erstwhile Columbia Records label mate one better by also covering Super Fly, perhaps a bit less felicitously. More visceral if gentle soul is definitely on hand in Roots, and the four channel presentation offered on this disc is invitingly immersive. Highly recommended.