With its gospel-flavored vocal harmonies, minimal production, and unusual percussion effects (including a bar stool being struck by a two-by-four plank), singer, songwriter, and producer Frederick Knight's 1972 hit "I've Been Lonely for So Long" ranks as "one of the oddest and most intoxicating records of the decade," in the words of Stax Records historian Rob Bowman. This, the deliberately idiosyncratic Birmingham, Alabama artist's one Stax album, also includes his brilliant, reggae-imbued "Trouble" (later covered by both King Floyd and Ry Cooder) and a very funky take on the Supremes' "Someday We'll Be Together." In 1979, at his own Juana label, Knight wrote and produced "Ring My Bell," an international smash by singer Anita Ward.

with Jesse Carr, Jerry Seaver, Glen Wood, Aaron Varnell, Randy Carmichael, Jesse Boyce, Freeman Brown, Eddie Massey, Herbert Ivey, Harvey Thompson, Harrison Calloway, Ronny Eades