Dr Feelgood & the Interns – Piano Red/Dr Feelgood (left), Roy Lee Johnson (3rd from right)
Listen/Download – Dr Feelgood & the Interns – Mr Moonlight
Greetings all.
Welcome back to the Funky16Corners blog.
I have to start by thanking those of you who contributed to the 2010 Pledge Drive.
While this wasn’t the best year, you’d have to be locked in a subterranean bunker somewhere to know that it REALLY hasn’t been a good year for a lot of people. That fact makes it all the more significant that some of you felt strongly enough about Funky16Corners to dig deep and send something our way.
I’ve never taken advertising on the blog (though it has been considered) for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, I don’t like the way it looks, and second, I don’t like the way it would change the feel of Funky16Corners.
In some ways – especially thanks to the response I’ve gotten over the years at fund-raising time – Funky16Corners has always been a collaborative effort. Those of you that stop by to partake in the discussion – often furthering it with new information and other leads – and those of you (more often than not some of the same people) who chip in during the pledge drive, are what keep the blog (and the blogger) going.
Despite the fact that blogging can often devolve into solipsism, I prefer it when it breaks through to a level where it really is a shared effort, not just with the music itself, but with the feeling of the music and the history behind it.
While I’m sure there are a lot of people who just stop by to click the links and collect the MP3s, there are a lot of folks, readers, collectors, fellow DJs and musicians who take the time to join in the conversation and make the blog something greater than the sum of its parts.
I’d like to take the time to thank all of you, because without you it wouldn’t really be worth the effort.
So, THANK YOU, VERY MUCH!
Consider this yet another new beginning, recharged for another year in the blog-o-mos-phere.
If you look up at the header, you’ll notice a couple of changes.
First, as promised the Funky16Corners Soul Club is up and running, with all the mixes that were up last week (and if you haven’t checked them all out, take the time to do so because they’re all excellent).
Second, following a number of requests, I’ve mixed down and archived the last several editions of the Funky16Corners Radio Show that I do for Viva internet radio. The shows date back to the end of April when I started doing the live mixes and the show moved to its Friday 9PM (EST) time slot. There are no playlists (I back announce every song) but there are short descriptions about what you can expect in each episode.
If you haven’t yet checked out the radio show, take the time to pull down a couple of episodes and check it out. I think you’ll like it.
Also, make sure you stop by Fleamarket Funk over the next few weeks. The Asbury Park 45 Sessions crew managed to record all the sets from the 5/28 session, and DJ Prestige will be posting them up over the coming weeks.
The tune I bring you today is an old fave that I only got my hands on (in 45 form) last year.
Something you might have picked up on over the years is that I am a regular hound when it comes to the original versions of songs covered and made famous during the 60s by (mainly) white singers, mostly associated with the British Invasion. This is mainly due to the fact that I came to much of the soul music I love via these covers when I was but a lad.
Today’s selection, ‘Mr Moonlight’ by Dr Feelgood and the Interns was covered by the biggest of them all, namely the Beatles (on the US LP “Beatles 65′).
Though my youthful Beatle-mania introduced me to the Fabs version when I was about 13, it wasn’t until decades later that I heard the OG. When I did I was blown away, especially when I began to dig a little.
As it turns out, ‘Mr Moonlight’ was penned (and sung) by Mr. Roy Lee Johnson, the performer of one of my all time fave 45s, 1966s ‘Boogaloo #3’. That, and the fact that ‘Dr Feelgood’ was a pseudonym for blues legend Piano Red (aka William Lee Perryman) who was 51 when this record was recorded. Perryman, who was playing and recording with Blind Willie McTell in the mid-1930s, spent years as both a musician and under the Dr Feelgood name, as a DJ in the Atlanta area.
It is in fact Perryman singing on the 45s A-side ‘Dr Feelgood’ which was a minor R&B hit.
It was the B-side, ‘Mr Moonlight’ which would – a few years later – put more than a few dollars in the pockets of Roy Lee Johnson.
One of those records that presents a perfect bridge between the harmony records of the 1950s and the soul of the 60s, ‘Mr Moonlight’ has a melody worthy of a Tin Pan Alley standard, and Johnson’s vocal is nothing less than epic.
This is one of those songs that I can’t help wailing along with when I play it in the car (or anywhere else I think I won’t get caught).
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with something cool.
Greetings all, and welcome to the 2010 Funky16Corners Pledge Drive, beer blast and chili cook-off (well…just the first one, really, but I wouldn’t mind some cold beer and hot chili alongside the funk and soul 45s).
This is the fifth year I’ve come to you with my hand outstretched, asking that those of you that are so inclined, and of course can afford to, donate some small sum to contribute to the upkeep of the Funky16Corners empire (as it is).
To go into the WABAC machine for a moment, this all started four years ago, when Funky16Corners was the only blog I did, and was operated at very little cost, employing the same cheapo file storage and bandwidth that I used for the Funky16Corners web zine.
Then, out of the blue the good people at BoingBoing, a VERY heavily traveled site, linked to one of my posts, and in a single day Funky16Corners got enough traffic to erase a months worth of bandwidth, just about shutting things down.
It was at that point that I checked in with some of my more, how do they say ‘web savvy’ friends, who informed me that I should probably take the opportunity to move the whole shebang to a paid server space where storage and bandwidth spikes would not present such an issue.
So, I signed up and moved on to bigger and better things.
As a result, I started the yearly Pledge Drive in an attempt to offset the cost of the server.
In the years that followed, the Funky16Corners Radio Podcast (and the ensuing archive, the most heavily attended section of the site) got started, the blog moved from Blogger to WordPress, and then this year, following some menacing behavior by the otherwise wonderful folks at the free WordPress service, I crated up the whole mess and made the move to run the WordPress software (a related but separate entity from the blog host) our of my own server space. While doing that, I redesigned the blog, opened the Guest Mix Archive and watched my stats drop and subsequently rebound as the rest of the world adjusted their links accordingly. Of course, the fact that I only just discovered that I neglected to set up the post archives properly, means that they’ve been offline from when the blog moved in January until yesterday. That didn’t help.
As in previous Pledge Drives, I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion. This year’s shindig evolved out of a recent change, in the blog, and the real world as well.
The last year has seen two important acquisitions in the Funky16Corners equipment arsenal. First and foremost, last Christmas my wife got me a portable digital recorder. Second – thanks to an unexpected windfall from a rare trip to the slot machines – I finally picked up a second turntable and a mixer, completing my home DJ set-up.
What this new equipment allowed me to do was (among other things) to record, and present to you, ‘live’ DJ mixes. The first of these appeared at Funky16Corners via sets recorded live at Master Groove in New York City. Later on, after the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcast Lab was up and running, I started to record mixes from my own turntables.
It was after I posted one of these, with the caveat that mixes recorded live would not have accompanying zip files of individually recorded tracks (for obvious, labor intensive reasons), that a reader (thanks Michael!) suggested that these mixes have their own section of the blog, and their own numbering sequence.
I had been thinking of something similar, and decided to take this idea a step further.
Though I have done a fair number of guest mixes for other blogs/sites, I have never (aside from a collaboration with my man DJ Prestige) ever hosted guest mixes by other DJs here at Funky16Corners.
Taking a page from the ‘two birds with one stone’ book, I decided that this year’s Pledge Drive would be a great time for the opening of what I’m calling the Funky16Corners Soul Club.
The Soul Club will be a repository for live mixes (whether recorded in the club, or on the decks at home), both by yours truly, and by DJs whoes work and sensibility I respect.
The Funky16Corners Soul Club will be opening with a virtual ‘Allnighter’, that being a collection of eight separate mixes (two by me to open and close the festivities, six by others). Once you pull down the ones and zeros you’ll be able to simulate, in the home setting, free of sweat (other people’s anyway), spilled beer (same there) and the like, a full evening (and then some) of high quality, professionally mixed funk and soul music.
When I decided to put this together, I put out some feelers to some of my favorite DJs, including the core of the Asbury Park 45 Sessions Crew, Brian Poust aka Agent45, and DJ Tarik Thornton and asked them to contribute mixes for the grand opening of Soul Club.
If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you’ve definitely heard about DJs Prestige, Prime Mundo, Bluewater and M-Fasis. I’ve been spinning with the Asbury Park 45 sessions crew for almost three years now, and during that time have developed a huge amount of respect for my fellow resident selectors.
Though I’ve DJ’d with a lot of people, my time with the AP45 crew has been a serious learning experience. These DJs have not only skills, and deep crates, but above all it’s their extraordinary taste that makes them great. I’ve written about it in this space before, but I have to reiterate how often an AP45 Sessions turns into a learning experience with one (or often more) DJ running up to the decks to see what another selector is spinning. There are many hot 45s in my DJ box that can be traced directly back to the AP45 Sessions, whether from one of the residents, or from one of the many distinguished guests that have graced us with their presence over the years.
DJ Prime Mundo may very well have the deepest crates of any working chef (including well known digger Julia Child). He applies the same levels of care and imagination to his DJ sets as he does to his food. Prime Mundo is – like every DJ represented here – a tireless digger with exceptional taste.
DJ Bluewater, in addition to being a longtime resident selector on the AP45 crew is the founder of Master Groove in NYC and a well regarded drum’n’bass DJ. He is a self described ‘funk 45 nerd’ and a connoisseur of heavy, heavy breakbeats.
M-Fasis, DJ and producer is the master of digging up and uncovering the heaviest records you’ve never heard of (or never expected). A resident at both the Asbury Park 45 Sessions and Master Groove, he also makes beats and produces.
Brian Poust, aka Agent45 is, in addition to running the most excellent Georgia Soul web site and blog, is one of the most respected soul DJs working today. Based out of Georgia, but traveling far and wide to spin funk, soul and gospel, Brian always brings the heat.
DJ Tarik Thornton is a native of New Orleans who has DJ’d (in clubs and on the radio) all over the country. He has a generosity of spirit, and like all the other DJs here, excellent taste in music. He started in college radio at WTUL in New Orleans, before relocating to New York City, and eventually Milwaukee, WI where he met up and started working with the crew at Burn Hearts. He has since spun with DJ Finewine (WFMU), Justin Salinas and the Hot Pants crew as well as the Hipshaker DJs in Minneapolis.
I don’t expect many of you to listen to these mixes end to end (though considering the amount of heat therein, you could do much worse with the next seven plus hours of your life) but the interwebs and MP3s being what they are, you can pull them down, file them however you like and soak up the good stuff at your leisure.
Once again, if you dig what I do here at Funky16Corners (and over at Iron Leg as well), and the current economy hasn’t left you destitute, please take the time to click on the Paypal link and toss a couple of shekels into the hat to help keep things going. It would be greatly appreciated, and since I’m going to keep working on this blog as long as time (and money) allow, it’ll keep the long list (close to 100) of mixes up and growing.
Over the last ten years, with the web zine, the blogs and getting to spin records in a variety of settings, the whole Funky16Corners ‘thing’ has become a big part of my life. The reason for this (aside from obvious matters of time spent) has a lot to do with the interaction these efforts bring me with many cool people, including the collectors and DJs, but also with the folks who just plain love the music and take the time to come out to the gigs or stop by the blog to add to the conversation, or just to say ‘Hi!’.
I’ve made many new friends, been turned on to lots of new music and most importantly found a productive outlet for my passion.
So, dig in, enjoy the music (click on the pledge links) and I’ll see you all next week.
Listen/Download – The Mad Hatters – The Monkey Children
Greetings all.
The end of the week is here, and as usual, I am just about tapped out.
Things have been busy hereabouts, with all the bloggish stuff, and all of the real world stuff that keeps the old datebook stuffed full of commitments.
Next week will see the arrival of the 2010 Funky16Corners Pledge Drive, and as I’ve mentioned a few times in the last week I have something very cool lined up for he occasion (the main thing that’s been keeping me busy).
Also, this Friday sees the long awaited return of the Asbury Park 45 Sessions at the World Famous Asbury Lanes. The whole crew will be there, and will without a doubt be packing some serious heat of the funk and soul variety, so, if that sounds like a bag that you’d like to be in, and you’re withing driving distance it would be a very groovy thing if you were to fall by and check out the doings.
The tune I bring you today is something I picked up off of a sale list a while back, mainly because it looked very cool. I’d never heard of the group – The Mad Hatters – but one look at the combo in the picture above, and a glance at the song titles on the album convinced me that it was more than worth my while to unfold a couple of dollars and grab the disc.
I’ve gone on at length in this space (and elsewhere) about my love for, and definition of soul jazz. I am without question a huge fan of the genre, as well as a connoisseur thereof, in that I’ve spent way too much time putting what might be described as ‘too fine a point’ on what I consider true ‘soul jazz’.
There are those that will lump pretty much everything with an organ on it into the genre, or similarly anything with the slightest leaning toward rhythm and blues. Much of the music so defined is – at least nominally – soul jazz, but this says more about the omnipresence of the sound between the late 50s and the late 60s, than it does about the people making those sounds.
If there’s a point I’m trying to make, it is that while many people were including soul jazz as part of their own musical bouillabaisse, there were others who devoted themselves to, and specializing in this particular sound. The music of the Mad Hatters would suggest that the group fell into that latter category.
I haven’t been able to discover anything about the group. My instincts (and the jacket photo on the record) suggest to me that the Mad Hatters were a working outfit, as opposed to some anonymous grouping of studio heads.
The music on the album, represented here by the track ‘The Monkey Children’ is pure soul jazz, bluesy and swinging, never overplayed or taken too close to the edge, ultimately the kind of music with which to nod your head (and tap your feet) between sips of a cold beer or the cocktail of your choice.
Groovy stuff, and the kind of thing I can still listen to for hours on end.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday with the Pledge Drive extravaganza.
The new week is here, and odd as it may seem, I face it with guarded optimism.
Despite the nasty surprise that our local Vietnamese restaurant (home of sublime banh mi and pho) had closed – which we discovered as we drove up to the front door – things are on an uptick of sorts.
My health issues seem to have temporarily leveled off, and next week will see the arrival of the 2010 Funky16Corners Blog Pledge Drive, for which I am cooking up something very groovy indeed. I won’t spill the beans quite yet, but I assure you that something cool is afoot in the land of the funky corners.
The tune I bring you today is a little something I picked up in a trade with my man DJ Bluewater. He always packs some heat in his sale box, and I am always ready and willing to grab some of it for my crates, whether by exchange of folding money or by barter.
I haven’t been able to find out a whole lot about the Premiers or their song ‘Funky-Monkey’. The J.O.B. label, named for its founders Joe Brown and James Burke Oden was a Chicago blues label that issued its first platter in 1949, a side by St. Louis Jimmy (aka James Burke Oden). Between 1949 and 1974, J.O.B. released dozens of sides by a variety of artists including Snooky Pryor, Sax Kari, Willie Cobbs and a cat named Eddie ‘Mr Kleen’ Clark.
Sometime around 1970, Clark wrote, produced and arranged the Premiers’ ‘Funky-Monkey’ for J.O.B.
This was the only 45 that the group would record for the label.
Interestingly enough, ‘Funky-Monkey’ was also issued on the Mississippi-based Odex label.
‘Funky-Monkey’ – which gets started with some tight, snappy drums – includes a sly, repeated guitar line, climbing bass, horns and of course, lots of (I’m assuming) human-produced, monkey sound effects. The Premiers don’t overdo it with the monkeyshines, but there is just enough to push ‘Funky-Monkey’ up against the novelty side of things.
This is not to say that the record is not funky, which it most certainly is, and there were tons of similarly adorned sides out there in the classic funk era. I mean honestly, line this up against the beginning of the Meters’ ‘Chicken Strut’ and it ends up looking like the very model of subtlety.
What you end up with is a nice little slice of urban funk, more than competently performed and altogether groovy.
I haven’t been able to ascertain if these Premiers (and there were several) went on to record anything else.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back on Wednesday.
The end of the week is here, and I’m feeling mellow (as a cello), so I figured I drop some sweet island soul on you.
This is one of those times, where I wish I had a selection of paragraph-long explanations linked in the sidebar, so instead of belaboring a point made in this space several times in the past, I could instead insert a footnote/hyperlink, which – when followed – could present the boilerplate, i.e. a shorthand of sorts.
That system never being put in place, I will instead try to distill the thought into a single sentence:
I love reggae, collect it when I can, but qualify the statement by saying that I in no way present myself as an expert on the subject.
How’s that?
That said (briefly) I recently grabbed a handful of nice reggae 45s, including a couple of nice soul covers. I was tempted to do another all-Jamaican week, but decided against it, feeling it might be cooler to spread out the individual sides over the course of the coming months, including the reggae as a seasoning of sorts.
Though I’ve danced around the idea a little bit in the past, I would say that although there is a stylistic divergence based largely in the rhythms specific to Jamaica and its denizens recording abroad (especially in the UK), much of the music described as reggae, ska, rock steady and what have you during the 60s and 70s is so closely related to (and often derivative of) R&B, soul and funk that it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to just wrap it all up in the same bag, and then to go ahead and slice it up by sub-genre.
There are clear differences, but the roots are in most cases the same, and though it has largely been a one way street (i.e. passing from the US to Jamaica but rarely in the opposite direction) there has been a lot of sharing of material.
Today’s selection is a great example thereof. Horace Andy is one of the great Jamaican vocalists of the 70s and beyond, having worked and lived in his home country, the US and the UK, eventually working in dub and even triphop, collaborating with Massive Attack.
The song I bring you today is a fantastic, laid back cover of Al Wilson’s huge 1974 soul (and pop) hit ‘Show and Tell’. I haven’t been able to date this recording conclusively, though it wouldn’t seem to be any later than 1981 (when it saw issue on the Studio One label). I suspect it’s probably from a few years before that.
The tune adapts well to the reggae rhythm, with some tasteful, subdued lead guitar moving in and out of the mix. Andy’s sweet tenor – at times lifting into falsetto – is supported by female backing singers. The arrangement is spare compared to the original by Wilson, but since Andy is a completely different kind of singer, it works well.
It’s very groovy indeed and I hope you dig it.
Vida Blue (top), Albert Jones (bottom left), Choker Campbell (bottom right)
Listen/Download – Albert Jones – Vida Blue
Greetings all.
The tune I bring you today is something that found its way into my ears in a rather roundabout way.
A while back, my man DJ Prestige traveled over to the UK, and while he was there he did some digging (natch) and sat in with UK legend DJ Andy Smith on his radio show. It was during that show that he spun a couple of his UK finds, one of which was today’s selection. I dug the tune a lot, so I set out in search of my own copy, and fortunately I turned one up rather quickly (and cheaply).
The tune in question, ‘Vida Blue’ by Albert Jones (from 1971) is a stomping funk tribute to the early 70s Oakland A’s hurler of the same name.
Jones was a Detroit area singer who recorded for a number of labels including Tri City, Bump Shop, Kapp (one of the Kapp 45s duplicated material originally released on Tri City) and Candy Apple from the late 60s to the mid 70s. Much of his work was under the auspices of Walter ‘Choker’ Campbell, a saxophonist/bandleader who recorded a number of records under his own name before going to work running the Motown road band, eventually recording for the label as well.
After Campbell left Motown, he started his own set of labels, including Tri City. Moonville, and Ultra City, with artists like Jones, Betty Renay, the Soul Merchants (I’m not sure if this is the same group that recorded for the Stax subsidiary Weis Records) and Lee Moore.
Albert Jones recorded four singles for Tri City, the last of which was ‘Vida Blue’.
Oddly enough, the flip side of this 45 is a country version of the same song by a singer named Tom Newton. Since the single was released to capitalize on the popularity of the ball player, it seems likely that the genre switch on the flip was engineered to double the chances that the record might be a hit (though I can imagine most people – like myself – being surprised one way or the other when they flipped the record over).
The Albert Jones side is tight, and to be honest, where else are you going to hear a funk 45 that namechecks Harmon Killebrew and Carl Yastrzemski?
Jones would go on to record a full LP (‘The Facts of Life’) for the Campbell and the Candy Apple label in 1977. One of the tracks from that LP, ‘Mother Nature’ was later sampled by Common for the song ‘Be’.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.
Listen/Download – Wayne Cochran – Goin’ Back to Miami
Greetings all.
Hey everybody!
Welcome to the new week.
Is everyone ready to get their eyebrows singed?
In the many years (decades) that I’ve been chasing records, there are records that I will seek forever, ultimately unrequited.
Then, with a tip of the chapeau to the supernatural, there are the records that are meant to be mine, pushed into my view, and delivered to my crates by the intervention of what the denizens of the mystic east once referred to as kismet.
Today’s selection is one of them.
Not too long ago, I purchased a video collection of performances from a Detroit dance party show, mainly because it featured video of one of my all time faves, the mighty Jerry-O. So, some time goes by and eventually the DVD popped through the mailslot, after which I had only to wait for some of that good ‘alone’ time, on account of nobody else in this crib has the slightest interest in watching fuzzy, third generation bootleg video of people they don’t know, lip-synching on a long forgotten TV show while a bunch of bored teenagers do the frug in the background.
That time finally came, and I settled in with a cold drink and some potato chips to enhance the viewing experience.
Things started out well enough, with some footage of Detroit garage greats the Rationals (I’m a big garage punk fan, too) and rolled right along to a variety of 1966/67 stuff, all groovy. In fact there were (including today’s selection) no less than three mindbending revelations (for me anyway) that will all appear in this space in the weeks to come.
Anyway, I’m really digging this video, when who should pop up on the screen but my old fave, Mr Wayne Cochran.
If you don’t know Wayne Cochran, you really ought to, because in the annals of whiteboy soul, Wayne and his giant, psychedelic mushroom cloud of a hairdo cast a big shadow. When you first see film of him performing it is immediately clear that he was trying his damndest to be the white, chubbsy-ubbsy James Brown (circa 1965), but when you have the chance to soak in the breadth of his catalog you begin to realize that he was something more than that, i.e. possessed of a genuinely unique, remarkably enthusiastic take on rock and soul music.
Anyway, I was watching the video, and then the host of the show introduces Wayne and says that he’s going to do a song called ‘Goin’ Back to Miami’.
“OK”, I thought. “I’ve never heard this one before”.
Then, in a flash, the entire landscape of Cochranistan underwent a radical change, erupting in a white hot blast of flame that pretty much knocked me on my ass.
I mean, holy flaming fuckballs…I’d heard a lot of Wayne Cochran, but none of it, no matter how right, tight and out of sight came within a mile of ‘Goin’ back to Miami’.
It was as if Wayne got ahold of Otis’s ‘I Can’t Turn You Loose’, poured rocket fuel all over it and threw a match on it. BLAMMO!!!
My eyes were rolling, my hair was standing on end and the musical card catalog in my head was upended and spilled on the floor, never to be properly shuffled again.
There was Wayne, poured into a suit three sizes too small, swiveling about the stage while the band, complete with capes (no shit!) work it out behind him. There’s a video out there of Cochran performing this same song live on the Jackie Gleason show, with Wayne in a suit the color of a key lime pie absolutely burning up the stage, working the call and response with the band, that has to be the craziest thing Gleason ever whipped on the folks at home. It’s not hard to picture some old guy smacking the side of his TV set wondering what the fuck had gone wrong.
So, once things came to a halt, I tore into the interwebs in search of a vinyl copy of same.
Imagine the depth of my crestfallen-ness when I came up snake eyes.
No matter where I looked – aside from CD comps – I could not locate ‘Goin’ Back to Miami’ anywhere.
I saved the search, and went back and assuaged myself by playing the video repeatedly.
A few days later, I repeated my search and found a copy, up for auction, with one bid (standing at 99 cents) from a seller who lived about five minutes from my house.
I assumed that the first bidder must have laid down a serious chunk of change, so I entered a significant maximum bid, instantly driving the price up to the princely sum of one dollar and thirty seven cents (!?!?) which is where it stayed until the auction ended, with yours truly the victor (to whom, according to legend, belong the spoils*).
It was as if the keeper of the great book of vinyl suddenly noticed a forgotten, dog-eared page, opened it and discovered that it had been written that this very banger of a 45 was destined for my record box, and with a wave of his hand (or magic wand, or tone arm), made it so.
A few days later the 45 hopped out of the mailbox and into my greedy meathooks right onto the turntable, and the next thing you know, abba-zabba, zip-a-dee-doo-dah, biff-bang-pow, I’m playing it, and replaying it at the kind of high volume generally reserved for amped up teenagers, the hard of hearing and those of us swept up in a transformative religious experience (my case being the latter).
And so, I placed it on the platter and let the wonderfulness flow up through the stylus where it passed into the computer, transmuted into the ones and zeros of legend so that this two minutes and forty seconds of nuthouse soul might be shared with you all.
So strap yourself in, crank up the volume and let it rip.
You will not be disappointed.
I promise.
You can thank me later.
Peace
Larry
*This particular scenario has played itself out, in very similar ways, many times before. Enough so, that were I a superstitious/religious type I might be inclined to suspect some kind of divine intervention.
I hope the end of the week finds you all well.
A few days back I got word that Edgar Moore, one of the founding members of one of my favorite 60s soul groups, the Emperors had passed away.
I’ve been a huge fan of the Emperors since I started digging up their 45s back in the day, from their sole chart hit ‘Karate’ (Top 40 in the Fall of 1966) , to their cover (which, depending on the day you ask me I may indicate to be the superior version) of Don Gardner’s ‘My Baby Likes To Boogaloo’.
You can head over to the Funky16Corners web zine to check out a piece I wrote about the group many years ago, but suffice to say, over the course of the handful of 45s they recorded the Emperors laid down a fantastic take on the whole sock soul thing with the same garagey edge you hear on some of Chuck Edwards’ 45s (was it something in the Pennsylvania water??).
The group formed in Harrisburg, PA but recorded all of their 45s in Philadelphia.
Today I bring you both sides of a 45 that I was unaware of for years, until I happened upon it at a record show. I had always assumed the Emperors three Mala 45s to be the entirety of their output, until I grabbed their sole Brunswick 45, ‘Karate Boogaloo’ b/w ‘Mumble Shingaling’.
Recorded in 1967 and produced – like their earlier 45s – by Philly radio personality George Wilson – this is a funkier side of the Emperors, with the core of their original sound still present, but with a stripped down production style.
‘Karate Boogaloo’ – which begins with some weird, clearly overdubbed crowd noise – includes some cool percussion, rhythm guitar and of course the Emperor’s harmonies. ‘Mumble Shingaling’ features some great, shambolic guitar and organ. It’s the kind of record that makes you wonder what the Emperors – like so many groups that bumped up against the end of the era of pure soul into the sound of funk – might have done had they continued to make music.
This is the last thing they did before the group broke up seeing a partial regrouping as Emperors Soul 69 for the Futura label out of their home base of Harrisburg, PA.
As has been the case for some years now, aside from digging up the original 45s (which a quick online search will reveal to be considerably more expensive than they used to be), your best bet is to grab the Philly Archives CD reissue which includes all of their best work.
I hope you dig the song, and that you raise a glass in memory of Edgar Moore.
I come to you this midweek with something groovy.
Last year during one of my DJ trips down to Washington, DC the mighty DJ Birdman was gracious enough to take me hither and yon, over both hill and dale for some of the best digging I’ve done in a long time.
Though the District of Columbia is the capitol of our great country, it should also be rechristened the Cheap Used LP Capitol of the East Coast. Though 45 come ups were few and far between – albeit quite rewarding when I did find them – the DC metro area is awash in bargain basement used LPs. When I finally got back to Jersey and opened the back of the Funky16Cornersmobile, I was almost (not completely, just almost) embarrassed by the huge stack of albums wedged between my duffel bag and my flight case.
In addition to a bunch of longtime wants, and a grip of stuff that Birdman was kind enough to turn me on to, I also brought back a couple of records I might have passed on, were they not priced between twenty-five cents and a dollar, rendering them all but irresistible.
One of these was the disc you see before you today, a record jammed into my digger’s memory bank by its constant appearances on other people’s finds lists.
Though I knew of the Sylvers (their ‘Boogie Fever’ was a huge AM radio hit back when I was a kid), I had no idea that Foster Sylvers had recorded – and had hits – on his own. The tune I bring you today was a hit (Top 10 R&B, Top 40 Pop) back in the Spring of 1973, eventually becoming an especially ripe bit of sample bait years later when it would be chopped and looped more than a dozen times for folks like Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D and eventually Aaliyah, which is likely why those in the crate digging set were sweating it so heavily (and why the LP often changes hands for between 30 and 40 bucks, the 45 sometimes going for more than that).
Now, I’m all over a sweet break when I hear it, having spent some time punishing a drum set in my youth. I’m not sampling or flipping anything myself, but there’s something magical about a great sample, even more so when the song it comes from is especially nice.
Such is the case with Foster Sylvers’ ‘Misdemeanor’. Taken at face value, ‘Misdemeanor’ is a pleasing bit of sweet sounding kiddie funk (Foster was all of 11 years old when the song hit the charts, come to think of it, so was I…). Affix your headphones and dig a little deeper into the track and I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised, since wrapped around Sylvers’ boyish vocals are all kinds of groovy sounds.
First off, the drums and bass are cracking, but close your eyes and sink into the arrangement and all of a sudden you’re digging the wild lead guitar snaking around the track, bits of celeste and percussion here and there, and a hypnotic rhythm guitar track that kind of rises and falls as the song progresses. The arrangement by Jerry Peters (who also co-produced the album) is really something else.
There are a few other interesting tracks on the album, but overall you have to remember that it was probably assembled for sale to whatever passed for ‘tweens’ back in 1973.
I hope you dig the track (give it a couple of close listens and see how it sneaks up on you), and I’ll be back later in the week.
I hope you all had a good weekend.
I was recovering from yet another surgical adventure (expected if not planned) and walked out of the hospital knowing that there will be more in the future.
It’s not just that this has become a huge inconvenience, but even moreso a constant source of demoralization. I wouldn’t even mind that much of it didn’t require trips to the hospital, and usually anaesthesia. It always takes me a couple of days to get right after a procedure, thanks in large part to the haze that tends to follow you around after you’ve been put under. There isn’t even that much physical pain involved. I have a fairly high threshold for discomfort, but the pain in this case takes the form of a kind of wave of inconvenience, with people having to take off work, babysitters procured and an already tight schedule getting a couple of new speedbumps inserted into it.
I for one will be fine in a couple of days. The problems I have are not generally painful (providing that the proper medical steps have been taken) but I’m always haunted by the specter of another visit to the doctor/radiologist/hospital, which in most cases, I’d trade for a little actual pain.
My whining aside, I am spending the weekend (when this was written) chilling, doing nothing remotely strenuous and trying to get my brain back on the tracks.
The tune I bring you today has been a huge fave for decades, but it was a few years before I actually heard the version you see before you today.
Back in the garage/mod days, one of the really important UK R&Beat touchstones was the music of the Birds. If you paused for a second there, you’re not alone since the band in question existed during the same time period as the US Byrds (McGuinn, Clark, Hillman et al) and there was some legal friction when the US band alit in the UK.
Fortunately for the UK band, the few, brilliant records they created could never be confused with folk rock of any variety. The Birds laid down some of the heaviest, razor sharp versions of US R&B ever recorded, as well as a couple of well crafted originals, and eventually a bit of freakbeat to close things out.
One of their finest records, and a huge number among my crowd at the time was their version of Eddie Holland’s ‘Leaving Here’. The song was covered by some of their contemporaries as well, but nobody came within a mile of the Birds for pure heat.
My own band at the time, the Phantom Five tore up our own ragged but right version of ‘Leaving Here’ pretty much every time we plugged in.
As I stated previously, it was a few years before I heard the original, eventually picking it up on a ‘Hard to Find Motown’ CD comp that turned me on to a fair number of other classics. The song would eventually be covered by the Who, the Tages, Jimmy Hannah and the Dynamics (a personal fave) and eventually by Motorhead and Pearl Jam.
Truth be told, though I dug the Holland OG from the start, it was a few more years before it edged the Birds version out of my consciousness and took the lead.
It was a while (like two more decades) before I’d grab my own copy of the Holland 45, with the gods of the interwebs smiling on me as I picked it up for what the mighty Ralph Kramden once referred to as a ‘mere bag of shells’.
Holland was – of course – part of songwriting legends Holland/Dozier/Holland. Though all three members of the famous triumvirate recorded their own records, Eddie Holland was by far the most prolific, recording well over a dozen singles (mostly for UA and Motown) between 1958 and 1964. ‘Leaving Here’ (written by Holland and Lamont Dozier) was released in 1963, and while it didn’t make much of a dent Stateside, quickly became a fave of London’s R&B obsessed longhairs.
Eddie Holland’s original is a fast moving dancer with piano and horns providing the backing, and a prominent snare drum laying down the beat. Holland’s vocal is great, though it’s not hard to understand why he would have settled for a lucrative career as a composer and producer considering the talent he was surrounded by on a daily basis.
It’s a great soul dancer, and I hope you dig it as much as I do. I’ll be back later in the week with more music (and less complaining).
And, despite all the aggravation, know that I won’t be leaving here any time soon.
Listen/Download – Maskman and the Agents – My Wife, My Dog and My Cat
Greetings all.
To get things started, I should let you know that due to some pressing personal business, this will be the last post this week. Nothing tragic, just stuff that needs to be attended to, so I figured I whip something extremely tasty on you to keep you going until Monday.
Back in January I heard of the passing of the great Harmon Bethea, aka the Maskman. On his own, and with the able assistance of the Agents, Bethea laid down a heap of smoking soul and R&B through the 60s. According to his Washington Post obit, he first strapped on the mask in 1964, and at that time he was hardly a spring chicken, having already turned 40!
The record I bring you today was an early (and momentous) arrival in my funk 45 crates, having been procured more than a decade ago, and has been, since the very first listen a big fave in the Funky16Corners household (my wife can quote lyrics from this one!).
The history of 20th century black music, from blues to jazz, to R&B, to soul and funk has a long history of humor running through it. Sometimes this came in the form of folks who were humorists first, i.e. comedians like Pigmeat Markham, Cliff Tyson and Timmie Rodgers branching out into music. In the case of Maskman and the Agents, the infusion of humor was secondary, as in the case of the mighty Slim Gaillard, hilarity was seasoning, tossed into a pot already simmering with musical quality.
‘My Wife, My Dog and My Cat’ from the Spring of 1969 is – at least in my opinion – the finest (and funniest) thing Maskman and the Agents ever laid down. A minor R&B hit, the tune is the fast-moving tale of a slightly slippery character who cannot get away with anything, thanks to a vigilant wife and a pair of traitorous pets.
Maskman decides to fall by a swinging house party – in spite of his wife’s warnings – and madness ensues.
The description of the party, and its attendees ( a couple of honeys who were ‘fat as a country possum stuffed with sweet potatoes’) is incredibly funny, as is Maskman’s food order, including pigs feet, hot rolls, greens with fatback and potato salad.
Naturally, things collapse as soon as Mrs. Maskman gets home and our hero is betrayed by his once loyal pets, his german police dog (which he raised from a pup) tearing off his crazy suit and causing him to ‘run out from under his hat’.
Solid, solid stuff…funny as hell and funky as well.
Maskman we hardly knew ye.
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