Jackie Brown... Oh, wait, we have to talk about the song first...

"Didn't I (blow your mind this time)" is the second-highest-charting hit by R&B/Soul sensations The Delfonics, on their third studio album which happens to be their self-titled one. Like many of their hits on the Philly Groove label, it's a slow, passionate love song. It was written by producer Thom Bell and founding frontman William Hart.

It's also been covered extensively, by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Regina Belle, Jackie Jackson, Millie Jackson, The Trammps, Maxine Nightingale, Patti LaBelle, and... a pop version by New Kids on the Block, on their self-titled debut album. Bet you didn't see that coming, did you?

Thom Bell, who produced for the Delfonics, also produced for The Stylistics, Chubby Checker, and Elton John. But his main focus was the "Philly sound," which is soul music characterized by funk influences and lush instrumental arrangements. "Didn't I (blow your mind this time)" is the perfect, textbook example of Philadelphia Soul.

OK, now, the Quentin Tarantino film Jackie Brown not only included the song in its soundtrack, but made such extensive use of it that it practically becomes a plot device. [PLOT SPOILERS:] First, the bail bondsman character Max Cherry (Robert Forster) is having coffee at Jackie's (Pam Grier) when she puts the record on and grooves to this song - Brown and Cherry have a conversation about how she never got into "the whole CD revolution." Next, we see Max Cherry at a record store in the Del Amo mall buying the Delfonics album and then driving around in the car listening to it. We're supposed to get the idea that this middle-aged white man suddenly listening to the Delfonics indicates his growing infatuation with her. Finally towards the end, a highly agitated Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) is riding with Max in the car on his way to what he thinks will be the return of his money, but he's actually getting set up. Whoops, Max left the Delfonics in the radio, and Ordell has a moment of suspicion when he remarks that he didn't know Max liked the Delfonics - it suggests that Max and Jackie might have become quite close and thus could have hatched a conspiracy behind his back.

It also bears mentioning that Jackie Brown seems to have become the least-popular Quentin Tarantino film among his fans. It has more to do with timing - it came out right after Pulp Fiction and is a much slower-paced film (and based on the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch), and how do you follow an act like that? Nevertheless, this was Tarantino's love letter to the '70s and Super Fly-type exploitation flicks. If people let it be its own story, it is quite well-done.