By 1974, movies like Behind the Green Door and Deep Throat had begun to bring X-rated films into the American cultural mainstream, while the commercial success of Shaft in 1971 had long since inaugurated the blaxploitation boom. Kenneth Elliott and Lewis Jackson hoped to cash in on these lucrative trends with Lialeh: a pornographic blaxploitation film with professional production values. Jackson and Elliott enlisted ace session drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie and a cast of top studio players to provide the soundtrack. As a film, Lialeh was only a middling success, but its deeply sultry, groove-laden soundtrack was one of the finest blaxploitation soundtracks of the early ‘70s. In the decades after its release it became something of a collector’s piece, sought by connoisseurs of funk and soul and by producers looking to mine Purdie’s spacious arrangements for samples. Light in the Attic’s 2008 reissue of this rarity let many listeners hear Lialeh for the first time. It's a surprisingly eclectic work, even with some surprisingly tender ballads and a dynamic arrangement of the gospel standard “Pass Me Not."