the early 70s was the best period for soul for a number of reasons. recording and production technology had matured and artists were starting to get greater elements of freedom from record companies post woodstock. both stevie wonder and marvin gaye managed to negotiate with motown to move away from the 3 minute pop hits to make some of the greatest music ever recorded, such as what's going on and talking book.
you also had isaac hayes, curtis mayfield and al green at their best, and then you have the funkier soul acts like sly and the family stone, funkadelic/parliament, earth wind and fire, the commodores, and the ohio players.
studios were beginning to realise how much profit could be made from black audiences, so more music was released to cater for the audience, more movies were made to appeal to that audience too, such as the notorious blacksploitation flicks which in turn led to some fantastic soundtracks
the early period of the 70s in particular was fantastic as you had a mix of artists inspired by each other and working off each other, from miles to santana, sly and clinton and james brown. some of the artists like miles, james and stevie recorded considerable amounts of fantastic work in 2 year periods with 2 double albums and 2 single albums in a 2 year period for some, and great stuff too as the labels gave them artistic freedom and the artists wanted to embrace that and create more challenging tracks rather than stuff to play on radio, and being able to write and perform themselves instead of fronting tracks written by one person, played by an in house band and given to the artist to sing on. artists like stevie and marvin were desperate to get away from that stuff and look what happened when they did
