The last five years have seen the box-setting of James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Bob Marley and a fair few other giants of black American music.

Perhaps because he was never as easy to pin down, the compilers have until now opted to skirt around the genius of Curtis Mayfield. The simple fact remains that he is one of the few genuine innovators of modern soul music: as one of the most obvious bridges between R&B and funk; as a writer who brought a new dimension to the ghetto love song; and as someone who was down with the cause from the dawn of civil rights. In terms of sheer impact across a 20-year period, there aren't many who can stand next to him.

Happily, People Get Ready! turns out to be one of the smartest box sets ever put together. And not just because it's got the words "Curtis" and "Mayfield" on the outside either, but because it limits itself to a mere three CDs. Which might sound a trifle tightfisted, given that we're dealing with a back catalogue of some 30-odd albums. But what it does is take you from The Impressions in 1961 to Take It To The Streets, released just before Curtis Mayfield's tragic accident 29 years later; by way of the songs that represent the man at his absolute best: the ones which painstakingly build layer upon layer of deceptively sumptuous strings, bubbling percussion, chopping guitar and sweeping brass, topped off with a unique falsetto voice that could come over with equal facility as happy; tearful, urgent, laid-back, celebratory or condemning.

The point is this: while you won't get any argument from me that Mayfield is one of the foremost poets of the 20th century; or that his lush, layered productions revolutionised the sound of black funk, it's undeniable that he also cut quite a few wrong 'u ns along the way Notably in the late '70s/early '80s, when soul was having a little identity crisis and he opted for disco. Remember Love is The Place? You do? Then you’re probably one of the five other people who bought it.

The sheer joy of People Get Ready! is that it can extract the one track from Love Is The Place which provides a musical flavour of the time while still sounding as much like a Curtis song as, say, ‘Move On Up’ – namely, ‘She Don't Let Nobody (But Me)’. Likewise the dreamy hustle-style ‘You Are You Are’ from ‘Do It All Night’ or the crisp two-step ‘Tripping Out’ from Something To Believe. And these messages are as crucial to the set as the Impressions' doo-wop, swinging gospel and deep roots R&B, or the fiery funk of the early '70s. For tempting as it might be to cram the discs with the infinitely more credible – and commercial – aspects of Curtis, many of these later songs meant a great deal in certain circles as they kept clubland's soundtrack from going completely ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’. So while ‘Party Night’ may appear to have kept ‘Right On For The Darkness’ out of the running, it serves to present us with a fully-rounded picture of one of the few individuals who has genuinely contributed to a number of different black music genres.

Of course, the major bonus of a shorter tracklisting is that it allows for fuller versions – no radio edits or brutally truncated versions allowed here. When a tune requires six minutes or more to make proper sense – as in the case of ‘Billy Jack’, ‘Get Down’ or ‘Move On Up’ – then People Get Ready! will let it flow. Which is what the whole set does with a particular sense of purpose – the join from one stage of Mayfield's career to the next is all but seamless. First it flows around a snapshot of the Impressions; then it eases through the revolutionary material of the early '70s, oozes round the weirdness of Sweet Exorcist and the skewed logic of There's No Place Like America Today and into the disco period, picking numbers that bring a dignity to the notion of the flared suit. The set even goes as far as to include a cut from Short Eyes, the soundtrack from a movie about a child molester in prison that disappeared almost immediately after its 1977 US-only release.

Indeed, the only hiccough comes when Curtis as a solo artist takes over from The Impressions. The first track we get is ‘The Makings Of You’, with ‘(Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below, We're All Going To Go’ following on its heels. The latter track was the first track on side one of Curtis, his first solo album, and the idea was that he announced himself and his new career with the booming lines "Niggers... Whiteys... Jews... Don't worry... If there's hell below, we're all gonna go!" It's a pity the same powerful statement couldn't have been made at the corresponding point here.

Still, let's take a reality check. If I'm holding in my hand a lavishly-packaged CD set that contains both of those tracks, and 50 other carefully-selected Curtis goodies besides, what on earth have I got to bitch about?