SWEET SOUL MUSIC: Atlantic Records has long...

SWEET SOUL MUSIC: Atlantic Records has long been applauded as an essential showcase for black music; the label has been a home for late-’40s R&B; hits and early-’50s doo-wop, for influential vocal groups like the Drifters and the Coasters, and for stars like Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin. But Atlantic has just as often been criticized for ignoring that heritage: Its most ambitious reissue, the eight-volume “History of Rhythm and Blues,” has long been unavailable, and only two of Franklin’s ground-breaking albums for the label remain in print (and one of those is a greatest-hits package).

But Atlantic goes a long way to correct that with the newly released “Atlantic Rhythm and Blues 1947-1974,” a collection of seven chronological two-record sets that cover the history of the label’s black music: a staggering 186 songs, from Joe Morris’ “Lowe Groovin” to the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” and Major Harris’ “Love Won’t Let Me Wait,” with lots of contributions from the label’s biggest stars.

The records also provide intriguing reading. The liner notes reveal, for example, that Stick McGhee’s 1947 hit “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee” (later popularized by Jerry Lee Lewis) came about when McGhee rewrote a ditty he’d heard in the Army, substituting “spo-dee-o-dee” for a line “unacceptable even to 1980s ears.”

(The line is apparently so racy that Atlantic won’t even tell us what it was.)

And if you ever wondered why the one-hit Bahama group Beginning of the End never followed up their 1971 smash “‘Funky Nassau,” here’s what an associate says: “They just didn’t trust Americans.”