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By Larry, January 21, 2016 1:29 pm

Listen/Download – The Pop-Ups – Lurking MP3

Greetings all.

The end of the week is here, so I will remind you to tune into the Funky16Corners Radio Show Podcast, coming to you each and every Friday with the best in funk, soul, jazz and rare groove, all on original vinyl. You can subscribe to the show as a podcast in iTunes, listen on your mobile device via the TuneIn app, check it out on Mixcloud, or grab an MP3 right here at the blog.

The tune I bring you today came as something of a pleasant surprise the first time I heard it.

I already knew the music, but had only previously dug it as the backing on one of my favorite 45s, ‘Golly! Zonk! It’s Scatman’ by Scatman Crothers.

That particular 45 has been a fave for years and holds a place of honor in my playbox. Not only is it a very groovy 45, but i always like to whip it on people who oly know Scatman from 70s TV shows like ‘Chico and the Man’ and ‘Hong Kong Phooey’ (for whom Crothers provided the voice).

Then, a few years back someone (I forget who, so forgive me…) turned me on to the 45 you see before you, ‘Lurking’ by the Pop-Ups.

My mind was good and blown. What you get is the basic instrumental track with Scatman removed, but the guitar and organ are bumped up in the mix, making ‘Lurking’ every bit as good for the dance floor as ‘Golly! Zonk!’ and then some.

As fars as I can tell, the Pop Ups were a studio group. One of the writers of the tune is Larry Goldberg who was in charge of the rock’n’roll side of things at the famously diverse Hanna-Barbera Records label.

The Pop Ups 45 was released before Scatman’s, so my suspicion is that he was offered the existing track and laid his vocal (which sounds improvised, anyway) on top of it.

The Pop Ups 45 is considerably harder to find than the Scatman version.

Either way, it’s a very cool track, and I hope you dig it.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you all next week.

Keep the faith

Larry

____________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, December 8, 2015 1:50 pm

Listen/Download – Jim Pipkins and the Boss Five – Mr CC MP3

Greetings all.

We’re going to get over the hump this week with a groover, but first, a lesson in why you should always read labels, but then again, not too closely.

‘Mr CC’ by Jim Pipkins and the Boss Five had been on my radar for a long time before I finally scored myself a copy.

It is a fast-moving, mod/jazz dance floor heater, mostly instrumental, save for some shouts outs through the record.

A brief glance at the label reveals that the record company, Emerge (also home to the Northern Soul rarity ‘Every Time’ by Anthony and the Delsonics) had themselves a St Louis, MO address.

Now, St Louis has a long and rich R&B and soul tradition, so if you were to assume that Jim Pipkins and the Boss Five hailed from that great city, you would be forgiven.

Unless that is, you have access to the interwebs and the Googles and such, use of which revealed in short order that the group was a Pacific Northwest conglomeration.

Jim Pipkins had been in a Seattle group called the Gallahads, which evolved into the Boss Five.

The Boss Five were managed by local DJ Chuck Cunningham, aka ‘Mr CC’, and released a couple of 45s, including ‘Mr CC’ in 1965 and ‘Mister Clean ‘67’ on the Norman label.

Apparently Pipkins himself went on to work as a DJ on a number of West Coast stations.

‘Mr CC’ kicks off with a riff that sounds like a fast-moving version of ‘Watermelon Man’ with organ, horns and some groovy, jazzy guitar.

The whole thing’s over in less than two and a half minutes which is a shame because it is very groovy indeed.

I hope you dig it and I’ll see you on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

____________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, October 18, 2015 10:42 am

Bessie Banks

Listen/Download – Bessie Banks – Go Now MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the new week finds you all well.

The record I bring you today is one of those 45s that haunted my want list for years (maybe decades) before I finally bagged a copy.

It’s not that ‘Go Now’ by Bessie Banks is an incredibly expensive record (probably grab-able for around 50 bucks on a good day) but thanks to the fact that it was later made into a hit (their first) by the Moody Blues, and its status as a mod soul classic, there is a high level of competition when copies do come on the market.

I probably could have had myself a copy sooner, had I been willing to throw a pile of money at it, but I don’t always have a pile of money ready to throw (or I may have already thrown it elsewhere…).

That said, the record you see above is proof that me and my money finally found ourselves a copy of this most excellent 45, which is why I can bring it to you fine people today.

Bessie Banks had been performing and recording for a few years before she found herself in a New York studio with none other than the mighty Leiber and Stoller working the board.

The song was written by Larry Banks (Bessie’s husband) and Milton Bennett, and though it is taken at a slightly slower pace, it is immediately evident that the Moody Blues (the early Denny Laine version of the band, not the psychedelic Justin Hayward version) didn’t change much at all.

Banks’ original garnered some airplay and made a small dent on the R&B charts, but was pretty much a done deal (having been released in January 1964) when the Moody Blues cover was released in the US a full year later.

Their version was a much bigger hit, making it into the US Top 20 early in 1965.

Banks’ version was released on two Leiber/Stoller imprints, Tiger and Blue Cat, both with the same excellent flipside, the slow-burning R&B of ‘Sounds Like My Baby’.

Bessie Banks would go on to record a few more 45s during the 60s (for Wand and Verve), and then a few more in the 70s for Volt and Quality.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all on Wednesday.

Keep the faith

Larry

____________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, August 18, 2015 11:33 am

Brother Jack McDuff and David Newman

Listen/Download – Brother Jack McDuff Quintet feat. David Newman – But It’s Alright MP3

Greetings all.

I thought we’d get over the hump this week with some of that Hammond organ goodness bubbling up from my crates.

Brother Jack McDuff is one of the true greats of the classic era of soul jazz Hammond (mid-50s to early 70s). He is joined on today’s selection by legendary reedman David ‘Fathead’ Newman, with whom he recorded the 1968 LP ‘Double Barrelled Soul’.

Their version of JJ Jackson’s 1966 hit ‘But It’s Alright’ is – if not a complete deconstruction – a slightly avant garde approach to a familiar soul hit, with just enough edge to catch your ear, but not so much as to leave you shaking your head.

Opening with an odd organ fillagree, the fray is soon joined by the horn section, laying down an unusual, Thelonious Monk-esque riff, over which Brother Jack solos with confidence.

When the song starts out, it might take a new listener a second or two to wrap your ears around what’s going on, but once you do, there’s a funky drive shaft that keeps things moving forward.

While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this enters Larry Young territory, there is some of that kind of thing at work here, which makes the record work as jazz, as well as a mod jazz groover.

I like it a lot, and I hope you do too.

See you all on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_______________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, May 5, 2015 11:36 am

Sammy!

Greetings all.

The middle of the week is here, and I have something very groovy for your ears.

Sammy Davis, Jr. is by any measure one of the greatest entertainers of the second half of the 20th century. A gifted singer, dancer and musician (he could REALLY play the drums, among other instruments), Davis has for a younger generation devolved into something of a cliché of ring-a-ding-ding, pinky ring, Las Vegas glitz.

There is of course a grain of truth in that cliché, but he was much more than than, and today’s selection proves that given the opportunity, he could get soulful with the best of them.

Pulled from the soundtrack of the 1968 sub-Rat Pack, Sammy/Peter Lawford vehicle ‘Salt & Pepper’, ‘I Like the Way You Dance’ is a swinging, four on the floor bit of mod soul.

Composed by Davis and his music director George Rhodes and arranged by UK jazzer (and husband of Cleo Laine) John Dankworth, ‘I Like the Way You Dance’ is driven by some hard edged guitar, wailing organ (I’d love to know who’s playing here) and horns.

Sammy’s vocal is hot enough that you wonder why he didn’t do more of this kind of stuff, but when you flip over the 45 for the Lesley Bricusse penned theme from the movie, you realize that ‘I Like the Way You Dance’ is the aberration, and Sammy had both feet planted firmly in the showbiz mainstream.

If you get a chance check out the clip of Sammy performing ‘I Like the Way You Dance’ in ‘Salt & Pepper’, where he (sporting love beads and accompanied by several lovely go go dancers) dances with a Rickebacker six-string.

It’s a hot little 45, and I hope you dig it.

See you on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, April 9, 2015 4:56 pm

Madeline Bell

Listen/Download – Madeline Bell – Picture Me Gone

Greetings all.

The end of the week is upon us, and so then is the Funky16Corners Radio Show. Coming to you each and every Friday night at 9PM on Viva Radio, with the best in funk, soul, jazz and rare groove, you can also dig the show as a podcast in iTunes, listen on your mobile device via the TuneIn app, or grab an MP3 here at the blog.

Madeline Bell is a name that I knew long before I ever owned one of her records.

Born and raised in New Jersey, but long a resident of (and a star in) the UK, Bell has a long history recording under her own name, as the lead singer of Blue Mink, and as a backing singer for a wide variety of performers.

Like Monday’s feature, Marie Knight, Bell got her start as a gospel singer, travelling to the UK as part of a gospel musical called ‘Black Nativity’ in 1962. She remained in the country and by the mid-60s had established herself as a solo vocalist.

Oddly, though I knew of her 1968 recording ‘Picture Me Gone’ as a big mod/Northern fave for a long time, I had no idea that its flipside, a version of ‘I’m Gonna Make You Love Me’ was a fairly substantial hit here in the US, making it into the Top 40.

‘Picture Me Gone’, written by Chip Taylor and Al Gorgoni, and also recorded by Evie Sands (the original, I think) and Dave Berry, is a fantastic pop soul number with enough push for the dance floor, a wonderful vocal by Bell and some amazing lead guitar.

It has one of those big, booming, anthemic choruses that the Northern crowd digs so much, and bears up quite well to repeat listens.

I hop you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all on Monday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, March 8, 2015 11:05 am

Ike and Tina Turner

Greetings all.

I hope the new week finds you all well.

The record you see before you is yet another testament to the idea that playing the long game, i.e. waiting until the time is right to strike, is essential to bagging the white whales that haunt the record collector’s soul.

Ike and Tina Turner’s version of ‘Dust My Broom’ (first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1937 – though with earlier roots than that – but popularized by Elmore James in 1952) is a very popular 45 on the Northern Soul and mod scenes, and as a result the competition for copies is often fierce. While at its hottest it’s not crazy expensive (running between 60 and 100 dollars), copies get snapped up quickly.

So, I held off for a long time, hoping that I’d find myself a copy in the “real world” (y’know, outside in the sun, where record hounds fear to tread), but this strategy bore no fruit.

Then, one day it pops up on Ebay, looking a little rough, graded a little low, but I knew (and trusted) the seller, so I put in my bid, sat back and waited to be outbid yet again.

Imagine my surprise when the auction ended – with yours truly as the winner – leaving me with what the kids (I don’t know what kids, but humor me…) call an eight-dollar-hollar*!

Eight lowly, wrinkled smackeroos. Ain’t that a bitch?

Ike and Tina’s 1966 version of ‘Dust My Broom’ dispenses with the age-old tempo/structure (just imagine that famous Elmore James guitar vamp) rebuilding the tune on an aggressive 4/4 frame, with Tina and the Ikettes trading lines while the band (including, believe it or not, what sounds like an electric harpsichord!) charging hard behind them.

It’s not hard to understand how this became such a popular dance floor record, even if it met with almost complete
commercial indifference when it was released.

I hope you dig it and I’ll see you all on Wednesday.

Keep the faith

Larry

 * I mean, the label’s a bit rough, but I don’t play the labels, if you know what I mean…

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, February 17, 2015 1:54 pm

Leon Haywood

Greetings all.

Today’s selection is an early side by a guy that I find very interesting, indeed.

Most casual soul fans will be aware of Leon Haywood via his biggest early hit, the sweet soul of ‘It’s Got To Be Mellow’, and R&B Top 20 hit in the summer of 1967.

However, do a little digging, and a little b-side flipping, and before you know it you’ve discovered that Mr Haywood had something of a double life going on.

In addition to be an excellent singer, Leon Haywood knew his way around a keyboard (mainly organ).

His very first 45 was a blazing organ instro version of Percy Mayfield’s ‘A River’s Invitation’, and many of his early 45s sport instrumental b-sides.

Haywood was also the organist of record (as it were) on the Packers 1965 ‘Hole In the Wall’, one of those soul records that had an influence far beyond it’s chart success would suggest. Keep your eyes peeled in this space for a mix I’ve been working on involving various and sundry Packers/Hole In the Wall variations, rip-offs and homages, or which there were many (and many of which featured Mr Haywood).

That said, his early sides for the Fat Fish label feature Haywood on vocals, organ and piano, which is where we come to today’s selection, ‘Skate A While’. Released in 1966, ‘Skate a While’ is the 45-only vocal take of the the LP track ‘The Fat Fish’, which – unsurprisingly – falls quite neatly in line with the ‘Hole In the Wall’ stylistic continuum, if you will. You get Leon laying down an excellent,soulful vocal over a tight band, led by his piano, the only bummer being that the whole thing clocks in at just 1:52!

It’s a great bit of classic-era soul party, and I hope you dig it as much as I do.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you all on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, January 4, 2015 2:15 pm

Messrs Baker, Bruce, Bond and Heckstall-Smith

 NOTE/UPDATE 01/05/15 – Thanks go out to Nick Rossi for hepping me to the fact that the version of ‘Wade In the Water’ released in the US by the GBO was recorded just after Jack Bruce had departed the group (Jan ’66) for greener musical pastures. The version of the group featured on this 45 includes Graham Bond (covering the bass with his left hand) , Ginger Baker, Dick Heckstall-Smith, and new member Mike Falana on trumpet. Nick  also pointed me in the direction of this excellent Graham Bond discography.

Greetings all.

I thought I’d start the new week with some hot and heavy Hammond action.

The Graham Bond Organization’s version of ‘Wade in the Water’ had been on my want list for years, and I only managed to score a copy a few months ago.

I’ll go ahead and assume that many of you are unfamiliar with Bond, one of the key figures of the 1960s UK R&B movement.

He got his start on saxophone (much like Charles Earland in the US) eventually moving onto the organ, which became his signature axe.

The Graham Bond Organization is not only worth knowing for the music they made during their relatively short time together, but because of those that made it. Joining Bond, and saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith were two youngsters who would go on to (much) bigger things, Jack Bruce on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums.

That rhythm section would have a tumultuous relationship from their earliest collaborations, on through Cream and that band’s reunion in the 2000s.

‘Wade In the Water’, the oft-covered spiritual was recorded by the Organization in 1964 and released in the US on the Ascot label in 1965.

Opening and closing with organ work by Bond that suggests a Hammer horror film as much as a sweaty R&B basement club, the tune soon swings into action, with stellar work by the whole band, but especially Bond and Baker, whose thunderous drumming is particularly well recorded.

The flip side is a slow, vocal reading of the blues standard ‘St James Infirmary’.

Withing a year and a half, Bruce and Baker would join Eric Clapton in Cream, and Bond continued a truncated version of the Organization and would eventually reappear in Ginger Baker’s Air Force, as well as making a few solo LPs before is suicide in 1974.

Fortunately for us all, he left a trail of hard-hitting wax in his wake.

I hope you dig the cut, and I’ll see you all on Wednesday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, January 1, 2015 12:50 pm

Greetings all.

I shall once again remind you that the Funky16Corners Radio Show takes to the airwaves of the interwebs this and every Friday night on Viva Radio. You can also subscribe to the show as a podcast in iTunes, listen on your mobile device through the TuneIn app, or help yourself to an MP3 here at the blog.

I thought I’d end the week on the kind of up note that you could stuff in your ears and carry to whatever party you’re heading to.

The Soul Brothers Six are one of those soul groups that is in the required acquisition category, i.e. if I find it, I buy it.

Like most folks my age, I found my way to the SB6 via the bare-chested wailing of Grand Funk Railroad, who had a hit with their 1974 cover of the group’s ‘Some Kind of Wonderful (a hit for the SB6 in 1967), and I’m not ashamed to say that I still dig the stadium stomp of their version, too.

That said, someone (I do not recall who) posted a video a few years back, of what appeared to be an indie film about the SoCal mod scene (‘We Are the Mods’) . It was visually arresting (with the mod girls and the scooter and all that) but what really grabbed me was the song that was playing in the background of the club scene.

I did a little digging and discovered that the tune I was hearing, ‘Thank You Baby For Loving Me’ was a Soul Brothers Six record (from 1968) that I hadn’t heard before.

Written by group member Charles Armstrong, ‘Thank You Baby For Loving Me’ is fast moving (dig that bass) dancer that contains everything that made the Soul Brothers Six such a great group.

There’s the rawness of gospel, street corner harmony, old time soul shouting and that gritty guitar that you hear on so many of their records.

The chart prospects of the SB6 were a thing of the past by the time ‘Thank You Baby…’ came out, but the record almost seems too raw for 1968.

A few years later, John Ellison would go solo, and soon after that would reconstitute the SB6 on Phil LA of Soul and GRT.

You used to be able to pick up a couple of their 45s on the cheap, but those days appear to be gone.

So dig the tune, and I’ll see you all on Monday.

See you on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, December 9, 2014 11:21 am

Sam Cooke

Listen/Download – Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come

Greetings all.

I hope the new day finds you well.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but in case I haven’t, here’s something…

As a more than casual student of the interconnected nature of the Tao, and someone who has experienced the (extremely) odd coincidence now and again, the way that my life intersects with certain records often causes me to take note.

Many a time, have I been in search of a particular disc for a long time, then I get a sudden urge to look again, and there it is.

The same kind of thing often happens when I write up a record (or get ready to do so) and then I discover that some important event tied to that record (birthday, death, anniversary etc) is coming up at the same time.

I had been trying to get my hands on Sam Cooke’s final LP ‘Shake’ (specifically to get the LP-only track ‘Yeah Man’) for some time. Considering the popularity of Cooke, and the fact that the album contained no less than three hits, it surprised me how scarce a record it was, and how hard it would be to get a copy at a reasonable price.

So this fall, when I had all but given up trying, I scored a copy of the ‘Shake’ 45, and then a few weeks later  a copy of the LP verily fell in my lap (sometimes – to paraphrase my man DJ Prestige –  it less me finding the record, than the record finding me).

Last week I sat down to digimatize the discs, and what should pop up on my radar but the fact that the 50th anniversary of Cooke’s death (12/11/64) was about a week away.

Cooke has been – thanks entirely to his untimely passing – at the top of the list of transitional (and hugely influential) figures of soul music.

This is not to say that he never made any ‘pure’ soul, because the tracks above will testify to that, but rather that the bulk of his post-gospel career was divided pretty evenly between R&B, pop music and crooning.

Cooke was a brilliant singer and songwriter, and there are all indications that he would (like Jackie Wilson, an artist who’s career paralleled his) have entered the soul ‘mainstream’ had he lived, but sadly, we’ll never know.

Today’s 45, which was released about a month before the ‘Shake’ LP (it was already charting within a few weeks of his killing) was a substantial hit, both sides making it into the R&B Top 10 by the end of January 1965.

It is a study in contrasts, with ‘Shake’, a hard driving (and influential) soul number, backed with the epic civil rights ballad ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’.

‘Shake’, later covered by Otis Redding and the Small Faces among others, features some surprisingly raw rhythm guitar (Bobby Womack) running through its middle, surrounded by booming horns and solid percussion. It was recorded at Cooke’s last session, less than a month before his death.

‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ is one of those records that has an eerie depth to it. It hearkens back to Cooke’s gospel roots, but despite the title, it has never seemed to me like a hopeful song. It has the ring of inevitable resolution about it, but only as viewed through great amounts of struggle and pain.

Cooke sang the song on the Tonight Show in February of 1964 (the performance has since been lost) and never performed the song live again.

Listening to ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, it now seems inevitable that a song and performance so powerful would be seen as a landmark of sorts.

That it was released almost simultaneously with his death has cemented that status.

So toast the memory of the mighty Sam Cooke,  dig the sounds, and I’ll see you on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

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By Larry, July 24, 2014 1:21 pm

Listen/Download The Cocktail Cabinet – Breathalyser

Greetings all

The end of the week is approaching so I will remind you once again to twist the dials on your interwebs radiola to tune in the Funky16Corners Radio Show, this and every Friday night at 9PM on Viva Radio. You’ll get an earful of the best in funk, soul, jazz and rare groove, all on original vinyl. You can also subscribe to the show as a podcast in iTunes, or grab yourself an MP3 out of the archive here at the blog (where more than 200 episodes are stored!).

Hows about some Hammond to close out the week?

I first heard the Cocktail Cabinet’s ‘Breathalyser’ many years ago, courtesy of a mixtape from my man Mr. Luther.

I have been in search of my own copy ever since then, only acquiring one in the last few months.

Released in 1967, as the flipside to a horrifying novelty remake of Sandie Shaw’s hit ‘Puppet On a String’, it remained for many years the obscure prize of many a mod/Hammond collector.

Written by hitmakers Phil Coulter and Bill Martin, ‘Breathalyser’ is a Hammond burner of the first order.

Opening with a fuzz guitar, and then kicking into high gear with absolutely wailing organ, ‘Breathalyser’ ought to have been a hit.

Though I have nothing but circumstantial evidence, I suspect that the person manipulating the stops and pedals is none other that the mighty Alan Hawkshaw.

If anyone out there knows for sure (one way or the other) I would appreciate it if you would drop me a line.

Big ups to my man Todd Lucas who informed me that this recording had a US release on the Dunhill label, credited to ‘We Believe’.

That said, no matter who’s playing the organ, ‘Breathalyser’ is a stunning Hammond 45, and ought to have a place of honor in the playbox of any self-respecting mod spinner.

I hope you dig it as much as I do.

See you on Monday.

Keep the faith

Larry

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived! The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock. They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US). Click here to go to the ordering page.

Also, make sure that you check out the links below to the Be The Match Foundation and POAC (click on the logos for more info).

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.