Years before The Delfonics, The Stylistics, and The Intruders brought Philadelphia soul to an international audience, Jimmy Bishop’s Arctic Records was releasing a veritable flood of remarkable soul music. Bishop was an itinerant disc jockey who’d plied his trade in St. Louis and New York before settling in at Philadelphia’s WDAS. Bishop’s earliest productions were undistinguished, but when he signed the local vocal combo The Romeos in 1965 he gained the talents of songwriter Kenneth Gamble, whose delicate compositions graced many of Arctic’s finest releases. Cooler Than Ice: Arctic Records and the Rise of Philly Soul is an exhaustive six-disc anthology of Arctic’s output. It includes both a-sides and b-sides of all 43 Arctic singles released between 1964 and 1971, as well as a handful of previously unreleased rarities. The material runs the gamut from well-known classics (like Barbara Mason’s tender ballad “Yes, I’m Ready”) to rarely heard obscurities by The Rotations, The Three Strangers, and other gifted but little-known performers.