KING - SOUL ON MY BOOTS [CD]

Most comprehensive retrospective of King and Paul King's recording career. Includes the hit albums ‘Steps In Time’, ‘Bitter Sweet’ and ‘Joy’ in full plus numerous bonus tracks, 12" mixes, B-sides, unreleased demos, and live recordings. 35 previously unreleased tracks. With sleeve notes written by Paul King, all housed in a deluxe 5CD clamshell box with individual card wallets. Step back into the electric colour and emotional pulse of the mid-80s with ‘Soul In My Boots – The Collection’, the definitive 5CD celebration of British pop-funk romantics King. This long-overdue anthology captures the band’s full recorded legacy across two hit-studded studio albums, a previously unreleased live set, a vault-clearing rarities collection, and Paul King’s solo album ‘Joy’ — complete with related 12" mixes and long-lost cuts. Fronted by the charismatic, quiffed presence of Paul King, the Coventry quartet stormed the charts in 1985 with ‘Love & Pride’, followed by ‘Won’t You Hold My Hand Now’ and ‘Alone Without You’, before crafting a more complex and introspective follow-up album, ‘Bitter Sweet’. Both albums are presented here in full, bolstered by a generous run of extended mixes, alternative versions, and hard-to-find single remixes. CD3 unveils for the first time King’s complete 1985 live performance at Strathclyde University—a thrilling reminder of the band's onstage energy, combining polished pop hooks with raw emotional charge. CD4 digs even deeper with 21 unreleased tracks, including demos, previously unheard songs, and an aborted single (‘Baby Raven Mane’), offering a rare insight into the evolution of a band poised between pop stardom and deeper creative experimentation. The final disc gathers Paul King’s 1987 solo album ‘Joy', produced by Dan Hartman (James Brown, Tina Turner), now joined by a wealth of era-defining 12" mixes and B-sides. Tracks like ‘I Know’, ‘Follow My Heart’, and ‘Love – Pride And Brutality’ reflected a bold new sound, fusing late-80s dancefloor sensibilities with Paul’s singular vocal style. This collection prioritises completeness and authenticity, with many tracks making their CD debut or emerging from the vaults for the very first time. The 5-disc set comes housed in an attractive clamshell box with individual wallets and features a booklet containing a newly penned memoir-style essay by Paul King himself—bringing personal context to this definitive document of King’s creative journey.