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By Larry, March 9, 2017 2:12 pm

Funky16Corners: Hello L.A. Bye Bye Birmingham

Bobbie Gentry – Okalona River Bottom Band (Capitol)
Billy Lee Riley – Mississippi Delta (Mojo)
Artie Christopher – Stoned Soul (Atlantic)
Cher – I Walk On Gilded Splinters (Atco)
Buzz Clifford – Hawg Frog (Dot)
Joe South – Motherless Children (Capitol)
Kin Vassy – Hello LA Bye Bye Birmingham (UNI)
Lonnie Mack – Too Much Trouble (Elektra)
Nat Stuckey – Clean Up Your Own Backyard (RCA)
Roy Head – Don’t Want To Make It Too Funky (In the Beginning) (ABC/Dunhill)
Area Code 615 – Stone Fox Chase (Polydor)
John Randolph Marr – Sarah (WB)
Skip Easterling – Hoochie Coochie Man (Instant)
Tony Joe White – Whompt Out On You (Monument)
Kelly Gordon – If That Don’t Get It It Ain’t There (Capitol)
Charlie McCoy – Minor Miner (Monument)

Listen/Download – Funky16Corners – F16C: Hello L.A. Bye Bye Birmingham MP3

Greetings all.

The end of the week is here and I will take this opportunity to remind you that the Funky16Corners Radio Show hits the airwaves of the interwebs each and every Friday with the best in soul, funk, 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 Stitcher and TuneIn apps, check it out on Mixcloud, or grab yourself an MP3 right here at Funky16Corners.com

Also, my (roughly) monthly jawn at WFMU’s Rock’n’Soul Ichiban stream – Testify! –  commences this very Sunday morning, March 12th at 11AM, and if you dig the sounds you hear both here and over at Iron Leg, it would behoove you to tune in your internet radiola (just got to the WFMU page and click on the Ichiban Stream) and dig it.

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That all said, what you see before you is the result of one of a number of ongoing obsessions (and musical workaholism) that finally reached a tipping point this past week when I got my hands on a record I’d been wanting for a long time (and bookends the original Honky Style mix which is ten years old this year) .

That record – Buzz Clifford’s ‘Hawg Frog’ – is in many ways the ne plus ultra of swamp funk sides.

The mix gets its title from a song that’s kind of a cornerstone of the sound, written by Mac Davis and Delaney Bramlett and recorded by no less than three artists in the mix (though I only included my fave, by Kin Vassy).

Swamp funk, country funk, white Southern soul, call it what you want – and really, it deserves a bunch of different names because as a style it’s kind of diffuse, with a bunch of things, funk, rock, soul, country, blues, psychedelia and R&B all intersecting in a variety of ways – the only real common denominator (at least in this mix) being the caucasianosity of the perpetrators.

You get some of the bigger names associated with the stylistic miasma, like Tony Joe White, Joe South and Bobbie Gentry, some of the lesser known folks, like Kin Vassy, Billy Lee Riley and John Randolph Marr, background characters like Kelly Gordon, Nashville heads like Charlie McCoy, Area Code 615 and Nat Stuckey and even a couple of unexpected names like Cher, Lonnie Mack and Buzz Clifford.

It’s sometimes funky (with a couple of very tasty drum breaks), usually twangy, often soulful, and with the soul of a mud-caked cottonmouth snake hidden out in the wheel well of bus taking Highway 55 from Memphis to New Orleans.

So pull down the ones and zeroes, and dig it.

I’ll see you all on Monday.

Keep the faith

Larry

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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, January 5, 2017 12:35 pm

Babe Ruth

Listen/Download – Babe Ruth – The Mexican MP3

Greetings all.

The end of the week is upon us, and so then is the Funky16Corners Radio Show, which pops into the airwaves of the interwebs each and every Friday. You can subscribe to the show as a podcast in iTunes, listen on Stitcher, TuneIn and Mixcloud, check out the show on Cruising Radio in the UK, or grab yourself an MP3 right here at Funky16Corners.com

The tune I bring you today comes from a veer unusual source indeed, but is one of the DNA-level building blocks of dance culture and hip hop.

Babe Ruth were an English progressive rock band that released a handful of albums in the early to mid 70s for Harvest and Capitol.

They never had much a hit (on their own) and by mid-decade their odd mixture of sounds was going out of style.

That said, not long after they released the debut LP ‘First Base’ in 1972, David Mancuso, the man behind The Loft picked up on one of the album’s tracks, the uncharacteristically (for the band) funky ‘The Mexican’.

The story of the battle of the Alamo told from the viewpoint of a Mexican soldier, and – in an interesting bit of stylistic foreshadowing – interpolating a snippet of an Ennio Morricone theme, ‘The Mexican’ became a favorite of Mancuso’s and the dancers at his parties.

Flash forward a few years, and DJ Kool Herc is up in the Bronx, rocking the party, when Grandmaster Flash fell by, and as he recounted in his autobiography:

“I heard DJ Kool Herc before I ever saw him. I was two full blocks from the park jam and it was only an hour into the night, but already it was loud. Really fucking loud. I could name the tune he was playing: it was “The Mexican” by Babe Ruth. And…It…Was…Thundering…”

‘The Mexican’, from its beginnings as an English prog-rock album track, became part of the foundation of hip hop, part of Kool Herc’s ‘Merry Go Round’ breaks. It was a staple of hip hop DJs, and grew in popularity on disco playlists (it was remade by The Bombers in 1978).

In addition to being an extremely funky number (props to bassist Dave Hewitt and drummer Dick Powell) ‘The Mexican’ is a fantastic window into the Mancuso ethos, in that it is a very catchy, very danceable record brought onto his dance floor from a totally incongruous source.

Mancuso’s knack for finding records in odd genres that mixed perfectly in his sets was stellar, and the history of ‘The Mexican’ going forward from The Loft bore out his decision.

‘The Mexican’ has been sampled a bunch of times (though not as much as you’d expect for such an influential side) and was even remade in 1984 by Jellybean, with original vocalist Jennie Haan.

It is a groovy one (though there’s nothing else remotely like it on ‘First Base’), with a very cool story.

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

Keep the faith

Larry

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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.