If My Friends Could See Me Now

For Linda Clifford's second album, producers Gil Askey and Curtis Mayfield wisely left behind the overabundance of cover tunes that weighted down her debut outing to concentrate on original material. The result is If My Friends Could See Me Now, the opus that earned Clifford her disco diva status. The first side of the album represents her finest recorded work. It starts with a bang via the title track, which transforms this classic show tune from Sweet Charity into a driving slice of orchestrated disco. It provides an ideal vehicle for Clifford's brassy vocal persona and is further sweetened by expert call and response support from the Jones Girls on backup vocals. From there, the album downshifts into a gentler mood with "You Are, You Are," a Curtis Mayfield song that combines a lovely mid-tempo groove with some spacy synthesizer effects and romantic-devotion lyrics that are given emotional heft by Clifford's vocal conviction. The coup de grâce is provided by "Runaway Love," a funky,