Melvin Van Peebles Watermelon Man (LP, colored Vinyl)

(Real Gone Music) 9 tracks, colored vinyl in green "Watermelon skin".

In an extraordinary career spanning seven decades, director and godfather of black cinema Melvin Van Peebles made only one studio film.

1970's Watermelon Man shattered all conventions with its bitingly satirical story about a white couple, intolerant and obnoxious insurance salesman Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambridge) and his seemingly liberal wife Althea (Estelle Parsons). Jeff wakes up one morning to find that his skin color has changed from white to black - and it's not because of his daily tanning routine. Unable to change back, he learns what it's like to live as a black man in America, and his eyes are opened. The uncompromising Watermelon Mans shocked audiences in 1970 and is still all too relevant today. Accompanying the biting comedy was an original composed by Van Peebles himself, who was recording for A&M Records at the time and was about to hit Broadway with two Tony Award nominated musicals.

The soundtrack to Watermelon Man was released on the small Beverly Hills label and preserves Van Peebles' pleasantly eclectic music - a mix of jazz, funk, rock, rhythm and blues, proto-rap and even bluegrass - and the songs Love, That's America and Soul'd on You, as well as a special appearance by Estelle Parsons on Where Are the Children All that and Ry Cooder, too: The slide guitar virtuoso, while not named, is said to have played the indelible the indelible slide parts on the entire album!