I hope the new week finds you well.
The tune I bring you today was something of a nice surprise from an odd digging session last year.
I’d been tipped off to a store I’d never been to before, and went hoping that I’d be coming home with the proverbial butt-load of soul 45s, and perhaps and LP or two.
Well, I rolled up on the place and at first glance it had all the look of soul vinyl nirvana. Old store, small town, boxes of records on the sidewalk…you know the drill.
When I got inside it wa almost immediately apparent that what I was faced with was something else entirely.
There were very few 45s (of any variety, let alone soul/funk) and what appeared to be mountains of non-soul LPs lining the aisles which were roughly a foot wide. It was the kind of place that seemed like it might cave in at any moment, and thanks to the close quarters, the digging was somewhat difficult.
I did manage to score a couple of cool 45s (some of which have already appeared in this space), and a huge pile of cheap pop and rock LPs (all Iron Leg type stuff).
There was a soul/funk LP section, but it was by and large fairly common and uninteresting stuff.
With a few minor exceptions, one of which included today’s selection.
I’ve always felt oddly ambivalent toward Arthur Conley, and to be honest, I’m not sure why.
Though he might be orbiting in the vicinity of the one hit wonder galaxy (he actually had a couple), the hits he did have were fantastic. Who among you can stand up and say truthfully that their head hasn’t started bobbing and their feet moving when either ‘Sweet Soul Music’ or ‘Funky Street’ came on the radio?
But other than those two songs, and his participation on the Soul Clan’s ‘Soul Meeting’, I can’t say I’d ever heard anything else by Conley.
By all reports Conley had an odd, spotty and itinerant career, his intersection with Otis Redding having been it’s highlight. He recorded several 45s (for several labels), and a few Lps before relocating to Europe and changing his name in the 70s. He passed away in the Netherlands in 2003.
Anyway…one of the LPs I managed to grab that day was Conley’s ‘Shake Rattle and Roll’ album.
When I got the record home and got down to work digimatizing, I heard something very familiar. It took me a while to figure out where I’d heard ‘Love Got Me’ but when I did it was one of those smack yourself in the head moments when you realize that a song you’ve known and loved for years was in fact a cover, in this instance the coverers being the Inmates and the coveree, Mr Arthur Conley.
Back when I was in high school, and a big fan of the end of the new wave spectrum in which bands were stirring the embers of what would erupt a few years later as the garage/mod revival, one of the bands that I really dig was the Inmates. It was via the Inmates that I first heard songs originated by the Standells (Dirty Water), Jimmy McCracklin (The Walk) and thought it took me 30 years to realize it, Arthur Conley.
One of the really interesting things about Conley is, that despite his status as a kind of minor, peripheral figure in the annals of soul, he wrote a fair amount of his own material, ‘Love Got Me’ being one of his best. The song illustrates the fact that although Conley was far from a major stylist (and sitting in the shadow of Otis wasn’t helping him in that respect) he was capable of writing and performing some top notch soul material. The ‘Shake Rattle and Roll’ album, which features a couple of excellent tracks like Conley’s own ‘Hand and Glove’ and the Penn/Oldham killer ‘Keep On Talking’ is available on a two-fer CD with ‘Sweet Soul Music’. Pick that up (along with a 45 of ‘Funky Street’) and you’ll pretty much have all the Arthur Conley you’ll ever need.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with something cool.
Peace
Larry
PS The latest Funky16Corners Radio Show is up and ready for download (just click on the Radio Show tab in the header…)
Gene and his porkpie hat contemplating the Hammond
Listen/Download -Gene Ludwig – The Vamp
Listen/Download -Gene Ludwig – Well You Needn’t
NOTE: I just found out that one of my favorite organists (and an all around good guy) the mighty Gene Ludwig is in the hospital. If you follow the Hammond-mania herein, you’ll already know that I hold Mr Ludwig in very high esteem. He’s not only responsible for a number of Hammond classics, but he’s still going strong well in his 70s, making music today that can stand proudly alongside his classic work.
Let’s all send out some good vibes and hope that Gene is healthy and back behind the keyboard as soon as possible.
This is a re-post of a couple of Ludwig classics from this year’s Hammond Week.
– Larry
Greetings all.
I hope the end of the week finds you well. I, on the other hand fell backwards through the front door of my house yesterday, landing flat on my back in a pile of toys. While my sons thought this was hilarious (I’m sure I would too if I’d observed it happening to someone else), I sit here feeling much like someone who fell backwards into a pile of toys, i.e. sore. I’m trying not to dwell on how much my own stupidity contributed to this accident. To do so would only make my back hurt more than it does.
I’ve decided to close out Hammond Week 2010 with an old favorite by one of the true masters of the instrument, Mr. Gene Ludwig. I was lucky enough to interview Mr. Ludwig a few years back, and when you get a second you should pop on over to the old Funky16Corners web zine to read up on the read ups.
The tune I bring you today is the very first Gene Ludwig record I ever heard, courtesy of my man Haim. Back in the day, when he still lived on this side of the country, Haim – aware of my Hammond addiction – had a record that he simply had to play for me, and that record was ‘The Vamp’.
You all know what a nut I am for organ records, and as soon as the needle hit the wax on the Travis 45 of ‘The Vamp’ my hair pretty much stood on end. A fantastic showcase for Ludwig’s keyboard skills, ‘The Vamp’ is also something much more.
There, in its two minutes and thirty six seconds resides a perfect encapsulation of the meaning of soul jazz. Featuring Ludwig on the organ, Jerry Byrd on guitar and Randy Gillespie leaving his drums for a turn on the tambourine, ‘The Vamp’ (so named since it was basically built on a riff in the studio) moves at a fairly brisk pace, yet, thanks to the absence of the full drum set, manages to generate an air of relaxed cool.
The tune opens with Ludwig’s fingers flying all over the keys, with short, rhythmic chops by Byrd as Gillespie pulls his tambourine out of the amen corner and goes to town. It’s at the minute mark that the organ and guitar switch places, with Gene comping on the organ as the guitarist solos at length until Ludwig comes back in to restate the main theme just before the fade out.
There, in well under three minutes resides pure, 1965, smokey night club, jukebox perfection. Back in 2007 I included ‘The Vamp’ (recorded from the 45, this somewhat cleaner version coming from the LP ‘The Educated Sound of Gene Ludwig’) in Funky16Corners Radio v.24.5 ‘Old School Hammond’, but since not everyone that follows the blog was around back then, and more importantly, it’s such an amazing record, I figured that I ought to bring it back for this year’s week long celebration of the instrument.
I’m also including – from the same album – Gene’s take on my idol Thelonious Monk’s (in his time, a survivor over the long haul, much like Mr. Ludwig) ‘Well You Needn’t’. It gives you a chance to hear the master’s jazz chops as he and the group dig in for six and a half minutes of pure, listening pleasure.
I’m happy to say that Gene Ludwig – 73 years young – is still working it out on the Hammond in 2010, with a full slate of dates. Make sure you check out his website for samples of his (excellent) recent recordings, as well as videos* some recent performances.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s selections, and I’ll be back next week with some funk.
Have a great weekend.
Peace
Larry
*There’s a great version of Gene and his group playing one of my favorite soul jazz standards, Percy Mayfield’s ‘River’s Invitation’
I hope you’re all good and ready to crash into what promises to be a slamming holiday weekend.
Assuming that the weather holds out the fam and I will be down at the Asbury Park boardwalk for the third year in a row to groove on the fireworks this Sunday.
I’m really starting to feel the summer in a positive way. The humidity has departed (a temporary state of affairs, but you take it where you can get it) and the sun has been shining on a regular basis, so the time is right for some summery sounds.
Before we get rolling I have a couple of pieces of business to take care of. First, beginning with next week’s podcast, yours truly has been asked to contribute a funky track each week to the Gentleman’s Guide To Midnite Cinema podcast, which, if the title wasn’t explanation enough, concerns itself with the world of film, with a concentration on genre flicks. You should fall by their web site and check things out (you can also access the episodes via iTunes).
Second, you should make sure to check out this week’s edition of the Funky16Corners Radio Show on Viva internet radio for more of the good stuff. It runs every Friday night at 9PM EST and is archived here as a downloadable MP3 file the following day.
I featured a track from pianist Pete Jolly’s ‘Seasons’ album in a couple of different Funky16Corners Radio mixes, but the cut I bring you today is, as the kids say, that real shit.
‘Seasons’, recorded in a single 1970 session, and largely improvised in the studio is as close as any album comes to being the perfect, groove oriented electric piano album.
Produced by Herb Alpert and featuring a group that included Paul Humphrey on drums and Milt Holland and Chuck Berghofer on bass, ‘Leaves’ is something of a lost work of genius, and decidedly ahead of its time.
The album is made up of a series of fairly brief cuts, arranged as a concept album of sorts, but unlike so many rock concept albums, weighted down with ponderous lyrics and ‘meaning’, ‘Seasons’ is entirely instrumental, which means all the concept you’re forced to deal with is in the form of a musical feel. I suppose it’s entirely possible that Jolly could have applied a completely different set of titles to the pieces and rewired the ‘concept’, but the whole thing works so well, you kind of find yourself forgetting all about any connective tissue and just letting yourself float away on the groove.
‘Springs’ starts off with the sparest bits of percussion and bass until Jolly drops in with a ringing keyboard (according to Odub at Soul Sides, a Wurlitzer electric piano). I love how the bass, drums and piano all get stronger in the tiniest increments, almost to the point that you don’t notice it happening unless you rewind and concentrate on one instrument specifically. What starts out as a whisper turns into a funky, nighttime groove, like closing your eyes and feeling a warm summer breeze move past.
Jolly didn’t record much else with this kind of a feel, which makes ‘Seasons’ all the more amazing.
You should really get your hands on a reissue of ‘Seasons’. I think you’ll find yourself listening to it in a loop, digging it a little deeper each time.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday.
Stan Kenton & Orchestra – 2002 Zarathustrevisited (Creative World)
Frank Wess – Wessward Ho (Enterprise)
Larry Willis – Out On the Coast (Groove Merchant)
Gary Burton – Vibrafinger (Atlantic)
Gary McFarland – On This Site Shall Be Erected (edit) (Skye)
Jimmy Smith – Hang’Em High (Pride)
Phil Upchurch – Elektrik Head (Cadet)
Pete Jolly – Prairie Road (A&M)
Hampton Hawes – Don’t Pass Me By (Prestige)
Neal Creque – Jasmine (Cobblestone)
Roy Meriwether – Mean Greens (Capitol)
Eddie Jefferson – Psychedelic Sally (Prestige)
I hope the new week finds you well.
I was just sitting here in the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcasting Nerve Center, when I realized that in all the new equipment/live mix/pledge drive hysteria, it had been something like three months since the last ‘regular’ Funky16Corners Radio mix, i.e. one with the drops and the accompanying zip file and the whole – as they used to say in the olden days – ‘shooting match’, and as a result, I felt that I should get my – as they still say today – shit together, dip into the digimatized stock and get something going. So, I did.
Things being what they are, that being busy, both with the real world moves and the blog stuff, the old Funky16Corners mix schedule (as it was) has been stretched out somewhat. This has not however resulted in a lack of content, in fact the net result has been more music, with the Soul Club mixes (expect more of those from myself and guest selectors in the coming months) and the recent addition of archived/MP3 versions of the show I do weekly for Viva internet radio. As a result there’s probably more to listen to here than any sane person could digest, so dig in, slap some of the good stuff on your portable MP3 delivery device and stuff it in your ears (as time allows).
That said, I have whipped up a new mix, and I think you’ll dig it. Funky16Corners Radio v.86 – Elektrik is both jazzy and funky, with lots of the good stuff you’ve come to expect as part of the Funky16Corners Radio experience, with a perfect vibe for a warm summer night.
Things get started with something that surprised even me, that being Stan Kenton’s funky, fusion-y take on Deodato’s reworking of Strauss’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, cleverly titled ‘2002 Zarathustrevisited’ (Oh, Stan….), wherein the often overwrought master of heavily brassed West Coastery lets his sideburns grow in and hands the baton over to the younger cats in the band. Unlike similar sounds emitting from the Woody Herman organization, I have little faith that the man with his name on the bandstand had much to do with this one, and as a result, it is very groovy indeed. Frank Wess works a very cool, vaguely trippy (heavily echoed) and somewhat funky sound with ‘Wessward Ho’. Alongside his most excellent flute work, there’s plenty of vibes, wah wah guitar and clavinet to being up the soulful quotient. If you can get your hands on a copy of the 1970 ‘Wess to Memphis’ album, do so, because unlike so many of his hard bop contemporaries, Wess was able to work very well in a more modern bag.
I’ve featured tracks by pianist Larry Willis in a couple of previous mixes, and for good reason too, since he was a master of a certain extra-hot, era-specific, electric piano sound. The tune ‘Out On the Coast’ take the soul jazz vibe and funks it up without drifting into the land of fusion. It’s serious enough to be jazz, but with enough get down in it to work as funk.
If you’re familiar with some of the more ethereal work of vibist Gary Burton you may find ‘Vibrafinger’ to be a somewhat jarring experience. Here, instead of the soothing chimes of the vibraphone, Burton offers up a heavily treated, electrified and distorted sound, accompanied by some heavy guitar and drums.
‘On This Site Shall Be Erected’ is an edited (by me) version of the first track on Gary McFarland’s concept album ‘America the Beautiful’. Thanks no doubt to the fact that he was co-owner of the label, his work for Skye Records is at times very far out, ranging from his soft and mellow vocalizing alongside his vibes, to heavier orchestral work, which, like this track, sometimes got funky. With guitar by Eric Gale and drums by Bernard Purdie, ‘On This Site Shall Be Erected’ moves from a brief avant garde section, directly into a few short minutes of big band funk.
Though you’re probably familiar with the Booker T and the MGs version of the movie theme ‘Hang’Em High’ (a Top 10 hit in 1968), you’ll probably dig Jimmy Smith’s long-form take on the tune from the ‘Black Smith’ album. You get to hear Jimmy work the Hammond alongside a piano (almost the whole time) and he does a predictably great job.
Next up is something a little spacey from the king of Chicago studio axemen, Mr. Phil Upchurch. ‘Elektrik Head’ from his 1969 LP ‘The Way I Feel’ sees Upchurch getting all up inside the echoplex, managing to be jazzy, soulful and passably psychedelic all at the same time.
Things mellow out a little bit – yet remain funky – with ‘Prairie Road’ by pianist Pete Jolly. A track from the largely improvised and wholly excellent ‘Seasons’ album, it features Jolly on the electric piano, and none other than Paul Humphrey on the drums. If you can score this on vinyl, good for you (it took me a while). If you can’t, grab it in reissue because it really has to be heard in its entirely. GREAT record. Hampton Hawes was featured in the electric piano mix earlier this year. ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ is another fantastic cut from his 1972 ‘Universe’ album. Neal Creque is another great, underrated musician and composer who is better known for his work as a sideman (with Mongo Santamaria among others) than for his solo work (probably because there’s not a lot of it…). ‘Jasmine’ is from his 1972 ‘Contrast’ album, and features some West Indian flavor mixed in with the funky jazz, sounding like a younger, hipper cousin to Sonny Rollins’ ‘St Thomas’. Roy Meriwether recorded a fair amount of major label jazz sides, but it’s his private press stuff that is sweated the hardest by the collectors and beat diggers. His version of Eddie Harris’s ‘Mean Greens’ appeared on his Capitol LP ‘Soul Knight’. He takes the tune at a faster, more aggressive pace than Harris did on his OG.
This edition of the Funky16Corners Radio thang closes out with a very groovy track by the father of vocalese, Mr. Eddie Jefferson. I wish I could say I had a copy of the rare 45 of Jefferson’s version of Horace Silver’s ‘Psychedelic Sally’, but I’ll settle for the LP. Not very psychedelic, but quite funky, this sees Jefferson in a very modern bag.
I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.
Listen/Download – Hamilton Bohannon – South African Man
Greetings all.
The end of the week is here, and it would appear that the summer weather may be returning as well (which is a good thing since the actual summer is only a few days away).
It’s Father’s Day this weekend, so I’m going to spend as much time chilling with my sons (and my lovely wife of course, without whom I would not be a father) and reflecting on how much my life has changed in the last decade (for the better, natch…).
The tune I bring you today is something I picked up a while back and have been exploring – at my leisure – ever since. A couple of other tracks from this album have seen inclusion in Funky16Corners Radio mixes, but I’ve saved the best for last.
If you’re a crate digger, or just a serious fan of funk and soul, you have certainly heard of Hamilton Bohannon.
Bohannon got his start drumming for Stevie Wonder and working at Motown as a percussionist and arranger during the 60s. After he moved on from Motown he signed with the Brunswick Records subsidiary Dakar where he would record several albums through the 70s.
Today’s selection, ‘South African Man’ is a long, funky, mid-tempo jam that didn’t make much of a dent stateside but was a dance floor hit over in the UK in 1975, the first of a half dozen hits he had in that country over the next seven years.
A lot has been said about Bohannon as a pioneer of disco, but his work is a lot closer to the Loft-era sounds discussed here in the past than any of the stereotypical sounds of the disco era.
‘South African Man’ is just about six minutes* of ‘vamp’, with a drum and bass heavy riff, augmented with clavinet and wah-wah guitar. The lyrics of the song – as they are – don’t really say much which is kind of surprising considering a song with this title in the heart of the apartheid era, but ultimately, ‘South African Man’ is less about thought and protest than it is about dance floor grinding in the club. And when I say grinding, I’m not kidding, since ‘South African Man’ lingers dangerously close to a porno-soundtrack vibe, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but yet another reminder that the hypnotic rhythms of the club aren’t just about dancing in the, how do they say, vertical position…
That said, slap this one on, stir yourself up an icy cocktail and enjoy the warm breezes of summer before they become (inevitably) oppressive.
See you on Monday.
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.
Listen/Download -Norman Whitfield and Rose Royce – Water
Listen/Download -Norman Whitfield and Rose Royce – Sunrise
Greetings all.
I hope you’re all well, and ready to dig into something interesting.
A few weeks back on Record Store Day, I headed in Asbury Park to see my man DJ Prestige lay down an in-store set at Hold Fast. I grabbed some cool looking LPs on the cheap, one of which was the soundtrack to ‘Car Wash’. It certainly seemed like it was worth it, if only for the title track by Rose Royce.
Well, I get home and hook up the turntable for a marathon digi-ma-tizing session, and soon discovered that the ‘Car Wash’ OST was a much deeper beat that I could have imagined.
The album credits the compositions, production and arrangement all to the mighty Norman Whitfield, and the playing to the band Rose Royce (who Whitfield found when they were backing Edwin Starr).
Anyway, while needle dropping my way through the two LPs, I discovered a couple of really cool instrumentals, both clearly the work of the man who created several psyched out/atmospheric epics when he was working at Motown.
What really struck me was how much of the sound of these two songs, though recorded in 1976, linked back to Whitfield’s 1970 era productions, blending them with a touch of blaxploitation soundtrack feel. I haven’t seen ‘Car Wash’ in years, but these tracks, ‘Water’ and ‘Sunrise’ make me want to check it out to see how they were used in the film.
The first of these ‘Water’ is really more of a short vamp/theme stretched out for three and a half minutes, which is kind of what you’d expect to hear as background in a motion picture. There are some vocals in the beginning, but they’re no more prominent that the repeated bass, piano and guitar lines that run almost constantly through the piece, interrupted only by a short string drop (which at times is reminiscent of ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’) and the occasional harp flourish (same there). Things do pick up a little at about the two minute mark, with the addition of some funky bass, but settle right back into the groove before long.
The real treat here is the almost eleven minute epic ‘Sunrise’. The tune starts out with someone working a ride cymbal like a gong, and then the unusual (incongruous) sound of a trumpet running a scale, quickly breaking out into something that would have sounded perfect behind Shaft as he stalked an evildoer through the back alleys of some urban hellhole.
Whitfield builds the song, layer by layer, with the bass, strings, tight, snapping drums, guitar, and then electric piano and horns. There are in fact two different electric pianos, alternating between a lighter, tinkling riff, and a one playing a much more wide open, molasses thick chord. The use of hand drums as accents, as well as occasional bursts of wah-wah guitar drop in like carefully placed exclamation points.
It’s a very tasty jam, and the arrangement/production by Whitfield is next level. There’s no doubt in my mind that ‘Sunrise’ would have fit in perfectly (with lyrics added of course) on any of the early 70s Temptations LPs.
The sad thing is, that Whitfield – in my eyes nothing less than a soulful visionary – after the early 90s backed away from the console, not doing much of anything in his final years. It’s not like he didn’t have a remarkable body of work behind him already, especially his mid-60s to early 70s Motown sessions as songwriter, producer and arranger, but you can’t help but wonder what he might have done with some of the nu-soul crowd.
That said, I hope you dig the tracks, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.
As promised I have returned with the second hour of the show I put together for the Delirious Sunrise program.
Once again, it is firmly packed with heavy, yet oddly laid back sounds, including a large number of personal favorites.
It’s the end of the week, and I’m just about exhausted (mentally and physically) so I can’t recall – even after a couple of surveys – what in this mix has or has not appeared in this space already (a lot of it clearly has).
That said, I hope you dig it (and that you pulled down the ones and zeros for the first half as well, if you haven’t, make sure you, on account of it’s very groovy, very moody and the perfect complement to the second half, which is this…).
In other – mercifully brief – news, the long planned renovation of the Funky16Corners Record Vault is about to commence, including installation (fina-f*cking-ly) of a home DJ set up. I mentioned last week that I came home from vacation with some ill gotten gains, squeezed out of the slot machines in Connecticut, which I promptly rolled over and invested in a second turntable and a mixer. As soon as I get a bunch of stuff boxed up, hundreds of LPs off of the floor and into a wall unit of some kind (I hope I don’t have to go back to Ikea), and build a surface on which to set up the equipment (as well as some speakers) you can expect a new era of live mixes here, and I can spend some time working on my (admittedly rudimentary) turntable skills.
I will also be returning to Master Groove @ Forbidden City (Ave A between 13th and 14th in NYC) on Wednesday April 21st for some more of the good stuff spread over the turntables at the speed of 45 revolutions per minute. If you are in the area and are so inclined, pencil the date in your planner and fall by. It’d be great to see you, and since things are getting warmer every day it might make for a nice night in the city.
So, until I return on Monday with some funk, have yourself a great weekend and dig the sounds.
The mix you see before you today (the second part of which will be posted on Friday) is the first hour of the show I put together for the Delirious Sunrise show on WLUW.
Considering that the show airs from 4AM to 6AM, I wanted to whip up a downtempo blend, at times funky, but in that twilight, laid back, noir-ish way that characterizes those few, quiet hours before the dawn.
Though many of the tracks included in these two hours have appeared in this space before (whether as part of a Funky16Corners Radio mix or individually) the assemblage thereof is new, and if I say so myself, pretty tasty, at least as laid out for the time in question.
I’ve gone into my deep and abiding love for my iPod in this space (and over at Iron Leg) several times in the past. Though I could be considered a ‘late adapter’, to say that the last few years have seen the iPod become an integral part of my daily (and nightly) routine would be a drastic understatement.
My daily life – thanks to a variety of factors – can be fairly hectic, sometime rising to the level of brain-scrambling, and those few, precious hours after the kids have taken to their beds (those not devoted to working on the blogs) are often spent wandering around in one or both (I have one devoted to video) of the old MP3 delivery devices.
Aside from the occasional stint in the automobile, most of my intensive listening – the time when I dig particularly deeply into a record – is done right before passing out for the night.
With the lights out and the earbuds in place, I can elevate the volume, and jump wildly from song to song, genre to genre until I latch onto something that grabs my ears in a special way, drills down into my psyche, and eventually finds its way into this space, alongside my ruminations. It’s really the only time of day where things get quiet enough (within and without) to approach music the way that it deserves.
It kind of takes me back to the days when I’d go to sleep every night with the radio next to my pillow, listening to everything from music stations to weird (at least the early 70s version of ‘weird’) talk radio, to the local ABC TV affiliate with a signal that could be heard at the very bottom of the FM dial.
After I get to the point where I’m too tired to go on any more, I pick something meditative, running the gamut from Nick Drake, to Mississippi John Hurt, Thelonious Monk, Ravi Shankar, or Kraftwerk or whatever, turn over and surrender myself to sleep.
Thanks to the fact that I’ve always had a hard time getting to sleep (less so these days, for obvious reasons), and staying there, I always go to sleep listening to something – music or spoken word – and often put things on when I wake up during the night so that I can get back to sleep.
Though I have no idea about the science of the matter, I have always found that having music playing while I sleep helps me dream (or at least have more interesting dreams), and has enough of a soothing effect so that when sleep is interrupted (hitting the pleasure centers of the brain and masking background noise) it can be reestablished.
I’m not completely sure that everyone will take this as an endorsement, but for the last few weeks, these two mixes (I have them linked together in a playlist) have been the soundtrack to my nights. There are a lot of deep records over the course of these two hours, and I find no matter where I hit the mix timewise, I always get a little bit of that ‘Oh, cool…’ feeling, and my overactive brain downshifts a little and all is once again well.
Whether or not you (the listener) decides to employ it in the same way, or as a calming (yet oddly stimulating) companion to your waking hours, I hope you find that I have selected them well, and that you dig them too.
Funky16Corners Radio v.84 – Moving Between Dimensions
Playlist
Blackbyrds – Blackbyrds Theme (Fantasy)
Roy Meriwether Trio – I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free (Notes of Gold)
Mike Mainieri – The Bush (UA)
Frank Wess – Underhog (Enterprise)
Eddie Jefferson – So What (Prestige)
Gene Harris – Feeling Me Feeling You (Blue Note)
Lonnie Smith – Hola Muneca (Kudu)
Bobby Hutcherson – Print Tie (Blue Note)
Jeremy Steig – Rational Nonsense (Solid State)
Larry Willis – Journey’s End (Groove Merchant)
Eddie Harris – Smoke Signals (Atlantic)
Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll – Road to Cairo (Polydor)
Lou Donaldson – Everything I Do (Gohn Be Funky From Now On) (Blue Note)
The new week is here, and as previously planned, I’m posting this new edition of the Funky16Corners Radio thang from the road, since the fam and I are on vacation.
I figured I could do a couple of regular-sized posts from wherever we are, but it occurred to me that since I had a few mixes worth of tracks stockpiled for just such an occasion, that I ought to put a mix together for the week and be done with it.
That said, Funky16Corners Radio v.84 – Moving Between Dimensions is another one of those funky, jazzy things that I like to assemble every once in a while, on account of that’s how I roll. Things are generally upbeat, but there are a couple of detours into the spiritual realm, ever so slightly far out but still melodic and groovy.
Things get up to speed quickly with a track by the mighty Blackbyrds. The ‘Blackbyrds Theme’ is one of the funkier tracks from their 1974 ‘Flying Start’ LP. Dig that tasty break. Roy Meriwether made an appearance in this space not too long ago. He was one of the preeminent (if not the best known) soul jazz pianists of the 60s and 70s, recording first for major labels and then waxing a couple of private press dates (including the ultra-rare ‘Nubian Lady’). ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free’ is from his ‘Jesus Christ Superstar Goes Jazz’ LP and starts out mellow, eventually picking up a nice funky pace.
Vibist Mike Mainieri got his start playing fairly straight-ahead jazz (he even played with Paul Whiteman?!?) but by the late 60s was getting further out, working an early fusion vibe. His 1968 session ‘Journey Through an Electric Tube’ (no doubt a reference to the vibes themselves) features mellow grooves (like ‘The Bush’) and sidemen like Jeremy Steig and Chuck Rainey.
I’m a huge fan of jazz flute (as you’ll see in an upcoming mix) and Frank Wess was one of the greats. Alongside players like Sam Most, Buddy Collette and the mighty Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Wess (who like those instrumentalists played a number of wind instruments) started out playing modern jazz, ending up signed to the Stax subsidiary Enterprise where he recorded 1970’s ‘Wess To Memphis’. An excellent, forward thinking session, ‘Wess to Memphis’ has plenty of soulful moments while managing to maintain a jazz edge. ‘Underhog’ features some very nice, echoey flute work. Eddie Jefferson was one of the early masters of vocalese, laying down vocals over some of the most famous jazz melodies of the day. His reworking of Miles Davis’s ‘So What’, from his 1969 Prestige session ‘Body and Soul’ may not be terribly funky (like a few of the album’s other cuts) but it is one of his finest performances.
Pianist Gene Harris is best known for his decade (plus) long work with the Three Sounds. ‘Feeling Me Feeling You’ is from his 1974 solo album ‘Astral Signals’.
Another recent Funky16Corners post featured the great Hammond player Dr Lonnie Smith. ‘Hola Muneca’ is another track from the 1971 ‘Mama Wailer’ album, which featured a who’s who of the CTI/Kudu stable, including Grover Washington Jr., Airto, Billy Cobham and Ron Carter. Bobby Hutcherson is one of the great vibraphonists to record for the Blue Note label in the 60s and 70s. In addition to several amazing sessions as a leader, Hutcherson was also a very busy sideman on many of the label’s sessions. ‘Print Tie’ is a track from his 1970 ‘San Franscisco’ LP, which he recorded with sax legend Harold Land.
I mentioned both flute jazz in general, and Jeremy Steig specifically, above. Steig – famous among the crate diggers of the world for ‘Howling For Judy’ (sampled by the Beastie Boys) – recorded a number of albums for Blue Note and Solid State in the late 60s and early 70s, all along the same lines, i.e. vaguely funky, infused with far out hippiosity and tip-toeing just along the edge of “out”. ‘Rational Nonsense’ was on the 1969 LP ‘This is Jeremy Steig’.
Pianist Larry Willis appeared on Funky16Corners Radio v.81 with ‘153rd St Theme’. The funky – yet mellow – electric piano feature ‘Journey’s End’ is from the same album. Eddie Harris made some of the finest soul jazz of the 60s and 70s during his tenure at Atlantic Records. Both alone, and with Les McCann he went a long way to defining the sound, and with his electrified saxophone, paving the way for the onrush of fusion. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the ‘Silver Cycles’ album, do so with haste, since it includes ‘Smoke Signals’. Funky, spacey and soulful, it’s a landmark recording.
It is with a tip of the hat to the jazzy rock cats, that I bring you Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll with ‘Road to Cairo’. Though they have often been placed amongst the UK freak set, Auger, with his jazz organ chops, and Driscoll, the soulful diva in a caftan made some amazing music in the late 60s, from pure soul jazz, to funky soul to borderline psychedelia.
This edition of the Funky16Corners Radio podcast closes out with a very cool cover, saxophonist Lou Donaldson (backed by no less than Charles Earland on the Hammond, Idris Muhammad on the skins and Melvin Sparks on the guitar) doing his thing with Lee Dorsey’s ‘Everything I Do (Gohn Be Funky From Now On).
I hope you dig the mix, and I’ll be back next week with some more of the good stuff.
Listen/Download -King Curtis – For What It’s Worth
Greetings all.
I hope that the end of the week finds you all well.
I seem to have found temporary respite from the seasonal onslaught of pollen, which at times feels like someone is following me around tightening a vise on my head. I suspect that the damp weather amplified the problem, but pretty much all I can do is take allergy medicine and hope that it goes away.
The tunes I bring you today are soulful covers of my all time favorite US 60s band (Tied with Arthur Lee and Love), the Buffalo Springfield.
Known to most as the group that spawned Stephen Stills and Neil Young, the Buffalo Springfield were much more than that, creating in the their short, tumultuous existence an amazing, often sublime fusion of rock, country and psychedelic sounds.
Their biggest (only) hit was 1967s ode to the Sunset Strip riots, ‘For What It’s Worth’ which was covered many times, most memorably by the Staple Singers and sampled by Public Enemy for ‘He Got Game’ (on which Stills re-recorded the chorus).
My love for the Buffalo Springfield has been a deep and abiding one. I bought my first BS record when I was 13 and still listen to the group on a fairly regular basis. The unfortunate thing is that their discography, even when augmented with unreleased material, is still quite brief, spanning only three albums, which make sit all the cooler when I come across an interesting cover of one of their songs.
I’ve always seen them as the classic ‘iceberg band’, in that what is visible above the surface is but a tiny fraction of their output. To the vast majority of people all they are is ‘For What It’s Worth’. To a small percentage of people they are known for what the members went on to do, and the tiniest percentage imaginable actually have a real idea of the depth and breadth of their work.
Last year I was out digging for 45s when I pulled a Percy Sledge single from a box and noticed the title ‘Kind Woman’.
‘No..’ I thought. ‘It couldn’t be.’ But, it was.
What was it? A cover of the very last song, on the very last album by the Buffalo Springfield; ‘Last Time Around’.
Written by Richie Furay , ‘Kind Woman’ is one of the more country-ish tunes in the band’s catalogue. Furay would go on to re-record the song solo, and with the band he would found after leaving the Springfield, Poco.
I couldn’t wait to get the record home and hear it. I was curious how Sledge would interpret the tune, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Sledge takes the country feel of the original and shifts it over into soul ballad territory, taking the verse at a reserved tempo and exploding during the chorus. There’s some great piano running underneath, as well as a nicely subdued horn arrangement.
The second track I bring you today is by the mighty King Curtis. His version of the Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’ comes from his 1967 ‘King Size Soul’ album (which also included ‘Memphis Soul Stew’). This version is taking at a relaxed pace, with lush strings, the King’s sax and some great vibrato guitar that ties it to the original. It has a great ‘late night’ feel that makes me want to play it back to back with Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode to Billie Joe’.
I hope you dig the tunes, and I’ll be back on Monday with some funk.
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