Listen/Download – Betty Lavette – I Feel Good (All Over)
Greetings all.
I hope the end of the week finds you all well.
There was no mid-week post, mainly so that the post honoring Gene Ludwig could remain in place.
I’ll be featuring one of his rarer sides in the coming weeks.
The tune I bring you today is one of those records that I chased for a long time.
I first heard Betty Lavette’s ‘I Feel Good (All Over)’ in a most unexpected place, that being a European compilation album devoted to releases from the Pama label. I picked it up years ago to get my hands on a couple of Mohawks tracks (and some reggae) and was surprised when a number of the tracks turned out to be UK issues of US soul 45s, none of which I’d heard before (this was maybe ten years ago).
The one track that really flipped my wig was ‘I Feel Good (All Over)’.
Over the course of the last decade, on and off, I made several attempts to get myself a copy, being outbid every single time.
This time, the copy in question had a poor grade, but since the opening bid was low, I figured I’d try to grab it. It ended up going for around 20 bucks, but I thought that I could live with having spent a Jackson on a filler copy until I had an opportunity to mint up in the future. With any luck it wouldn’t take another ten years.
So, the record shows up, and once again, the chance taken paid off in spades in that as soon as I played the record I realized that no upgrade would be necessary.
If you haven’t heard ‘I Feel Good All Over’ before, give it a spin and you’ll see why I coveted it for so long.
It is a rock solid, Detroit soul dancer with a dynamite vocal by Lavette and a blazing horn chart. This is 100%, guaranteed dance floor fire.
Give it a close listen, and once you get past Betty’s amazing singing, check out that guitar running underneath things (especially near the beginning of the record). It’s an ever so slightly rough, almost Southern touch to a slamming Motor City side (I’d love to know who it is…).
The flipside, ‘Only Your Love Can Save Me’ is less aggressive, but also excellent.
Lavette, a native Michigander recorded for a variety of labels during the 60s, releasing her first 45 in 1962 (on Atlantic) when she was just 16 years old. She went on (at some point changing the spelling of her first name to ‘Bettye’) to record for Calla, Karen, Silver Fox, SSS Intl, Atco and a few other labels into the mid-70s, when she took a break from recording.
She recorded an album for Motown in 1982, after which she didn’t go back into the studio until making a serious comeback in the 2000s.
Her most recent album, ‘Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook’ found her covering the Who, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Traffic among others.
Today’s selection (above)
The mighty Fame Studio (below)
There’s soul between those bricks…
Listen/Download – The Inclines – Pressure Cooker Pt 1
Listen/Download – The Inclines – Pressure Cooker Pt2
Greetings all.
I hope the new week finds you all well.
The heat (in measure of actual temperature) has seen a decline. Unfortunately this was met with an incline in the humidity, so while it is not technically as hot as it was last week, it is just as uncomfortable, so, instead of catching fire when you step out of the house, you merely start to melt.
The 45 I bring you today is something that was initially passed on to me years ago by my man Haim, who had a spare copy of the 45, which although it was in rough condition, since it cost me exactly nothing I was (and still am) grateful, and placed it in the crates as what we record nerds refer to as a space-holder/keeper copy.
I dug ‘Pressure Cooker Pts 1&2’ by the Inclines, and kept my eyes peeled for an opportunity to upgrade.
Just such an opportunity was encountered at this year’s All-45 Show in Allentown.
I’d already pretty much emptied my wallet when I happened upon a dealer I did not know, and started digging in what soon turned out to be a box full of excellent funk and soul 45s. There was only one problem…
Not a single one of these gems was priced, and there was no indicator anywhere on the table as to how much this fine gentleman might be asking for his stock.
This is rarely a good thing, since such discoveries are often met with a stock playlet, inevitably leading to my disappointment.
It kind of goes like this (with me trying to find a satisfying middle ground between looking like a rube and/or a shark):
Me: Um, how much for the 45s?
Dealer: Oh, let me take a look at those..hmmmmm…that’s a good one….so’s that…
Me: Oh, uh, I don’t know those…they looked cool.
Dealer: How about $200 for the lot?
Me: Gulp…
Aaaand scene!
(Magnify the discomfort in the above situation when LPs are involved)
However, once in a great while, an unpriced box of 45s is just what it seems, i.e. a random collection of stock that a dealer wants to move.
That was the deal this time, and I minted up on two faves (the Emperors ‘Mumble Shingaling’ and today’s selection) at the extremely beneficial price of two US dollars per, which was more than amenable. I took my records and skulked away.
Now I haven’t been able to nail down a whole lot of info on the Inclines. They seem to have released two 45s on Atco, one as the Inclines and one under the name of group member Tyrone McCollum.
They seem to have hailed from either northern Georgia or southern Tennessee, having recorded a few records for the Chattanooga based Gil label.
‘Pressure Cooker Pts 1&2’ was originally released on the Hawk label (I have no idea where that label was based but wouldn’t be surprised if it was from the same region).
Today’s selection was recorded at the storied Fame studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama in 1969 and is a fantastic, mid-tempo slice of southern instrumental funk. The first part is dominated by the horns, with a repeated riff which drops out for a saxophone solo. The bass, drums and electric piano form a thick, muddy bottom that gives the relaxed, slightly jazzy tune a funky kick.
The flip side (make sure to download side 2) sees the keyboards come to the front, with the electric piano and organ both getting time to shine.
It’s a very cool record precisely because it’s so laid back. It has a kind of ‘nighttime’ vibe to it, not quite as spooky as a side like ‘Nickol Nickol’ by the Brothers of Hope, but moving in that direction.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Wednesday.
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…)
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.
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.
Listen/Download -The Uptights – You Git’s None of This
Greetings all.
I come to you in-midweek with a very cool 45 I picked up at the Allentown, all-45 show.
I was flipping through a couple of boxes of records at the table of a dealer that I’ve been seeing at Allentown for years, who usually brings a less expensive, but always interesting selection to the show.
It was the Skye label that caught my eye first. Skye was owned/operated by heavies like Cal Tjader, Gary McFarland and Gabor Szabo, and over the years I’ve always tried to grab their stuff whenever I came across it in the field. Aside from the three principals listed above, Skye released albums by Lena Horne, Armando Peraza, Grady Tate, and the psyche pop of Wendy and Bonnie (among others).
Even if the Skye name meant nothing to me, I very well would have picked up the record in question, on account of what crate digger worth their salt could in good conscience pass up something called ‘You Git’s None of This’ by a group called the Uptights? I couldn’t.*
I got the record out to the car, and discovered not a funk 45, but rather a powerful southern soul ballad with a fantastic lead vocal. There’s some gospel piano, subtle electric piano accents, horns and backing vocals that sound like the Sweet Inspirations. It has the sound of something written in the Memphis/Muscle Shoals style, but clearly recorded in either New York or Los Angeles.
But guess what?
I can find out NOTHING about the Uptights.
There is a Skye discography that dates the session to 1970, but nothing else. There are so few 45-only artists on the label (all of the other Skye 45s I’ve found are LP tracks) that you have to wonder not only who the Uptights were, but how they ended up on Skye.
Were they backup singers for a bigger artist’s session who impressed someone at the label? A nightclub act that someone saw and brought to Skye?
I just don’t know.
The publishing info on the label doesn’t turn up anything either. There are dozens of ‘Poindexters’ in the BMI database, but no first initials listed on the label.
The song itself (trying multiple variations in the spelling) fails to bring up any hits either.
I’m stumped, which sucks since I love this record and wish I could find the back-story, but it would appear that this isn’t going to happen today.
As always, I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back on Friday with something cool.
Galt McDermot & His Orchestra – Coffin Ed & Gravedigger (UA)
Junior Walker & the All Stars – Baby You Know You Ain’t Right (Soul)
Masqueraders – I Don’t Want Nobody To Lead Me On (Wand)
Mighty Hannibal – Jerkin’ The Dog (Shurfine)
Syl Johnson – Dresses Too Short (Twinight)
Joe Hicks – Home Sweet Home Pt2 (Scepter)
Andre Williams – Loose Juice (Wingate)
Dynamics – Ain’t No Sun (Since You’ve Been Gone) (Cotillion)
Otis Goodwin – Mini Skirts (Walker-Reeder)
Junior Wells – Up In Heah (Bright Star)
James Young & the Housewreckers – Barking Up the Wrong Tree (Jet Stream)
Toddlin’ Town Sounds – The Dud (Toddlin’ Town)
Larry Birdsong – Digging Your Potatoes (Ref-O-Ree)
James Barnes and the Agents – Good and Funky (Golden Hit)
Sir Lattimore Brown – Shake and Vibrate (SS7)
Lou Courtney – Rubber Neckin’ (Chick Check’n) (Verve)
Kenny Smith – Go For Yourself (RCA)
Lee Moses – Day Tripper (Musicor)
Welcome back to the ongoing saga of the Funky16Corners blog, its author, a huge, ever-pulsing mountain of records and his efforts to rein it all in and make some sense of it (both physically and philosophically).
I spent the first part of the weekend checking out the mighty DJ Prestige doing an in-store set at Hold Fast in Asbury Park, while also (of course) picking up a handful of LPs to celebrate Record Store Day. Pres brought the heat (as expected) and then the fam and I headed out for some of those good Long Branch hot dogs and a couple of other errands, followed by some serious work in the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcasting Nerve Center.
The renovation is almost done, with some fine tuning remaining here and there, with the disposal of much trash yet to be completed (I suspect a trip or two to the town dump maybe in order). After undoing a veritable Gordian knot of old-school computer equipment (as well as moving/storing a huge amount of data, most of it blog-related, onto a new 1TB drive), it’ll all have to be reconfigured over the next few days. I have my work cut out for me, but things are going to be so much easier when I’m done that it’ll be more than worth it.
This early and unexpected edition of the Funky16Corners Radio thing is evidence of said project, and a small bit of celebration that it is in fact coming to fruition. The first thing I did (after getting the room somewhat organized) was the installation of the home DJ setup (see above). This had been both a long time coming, and extremely satisfying when it was finished.
Following a few days of getting all my sonic ducks in a row (cableing, knob-turning, equalizing and whatnot), I hooked up the digital recorder, grabbed my road cases and pulled out a small stack of 45s and mixed them live, on the spot.
Aside from a certain, unifying feel (funk, soul and funky soul, natch), I didn’t concentrate all that much on pre-selection of the tunes herein. I grabbed something interesting to kick things off, and as that record rotated, I pulled a handful of others out of the box, picked one (or two, or three, depending on how deep a handful fate was dealing me) that I thought might fit, cued it up on the second turntable and repeated the process until a little over forty-five minutes later the needle on the last record hit the run-off groove. Not unlike how I do it when I’m spinning at the Asbury Park 45 Sessions or any other live date. It’s one of those things where you hope you’ve stocked your record box properly, and you let inspirado take you by the hand and lead where it will.
There are a lot of old faves here, as well as a couple of tracks that will return to be blogged on their own in the not too distant future. As has been the policy with ‘live’ mixes, there is no accompanying zip file, but remember that this is not going to be the ongoing F16Radio format. Think of it as a special bonus to stuff into your ears on Monday.
I hope you dig the mix, and I’ll be back later in the week with something groovy.
Greetings all.
Just a programming note to let you know that this Monday will bring the heretofore unprecedented appearance of a guest post (i.e. one not written by yours truly) from my man Eric over at Record Racks.
I will be reciprocating at his fine blog as well.
Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you then.
Listen/Download -Cliff Driver’s Infernal Machine – I Got a New Thing (inst)
Greetings all.
I hope everyone (in a geographically appropriate radius) is enjoying the prematurely ‘spring-y’ weather. Not all that far removed from what seemed like an eternal wall of snow, we’ve been grooving on 70 degree-plus weather the last few days. Sure it’s still chilly in the early morning and after the sun goes down, but since I tend to remain indoors during those hours, I don’t mind all that much.
I took advantage of the wonderful weather to drive two hours in my car and stand around in a warehouse for two and a half hours more digging at the legendary all-45/78 record show in Allentown, PA. This has become – over the years I’ve been traveling to Allentown for record-related purposes – quite the Pavlovian exercise, with yours truly enduring a painfully monotonous drive so that I might, like a hamster eager for num-nums, be rewarded at the end by stacks of vinyl.
Today was an especially nice trip, mainly because I scored a heap of nice stuff (split about 50/50 between soul/funk and rock/pop) and got to meet up with some groovy people.
As I was driving out to the show, I was giving some thought s to what I’d write about the experience, deciding in advance that I’d take it upon myself to counter the stereotype of record shows as a freak parade of basement dwelling, vinyl hungry Morlocks, crawling to the surface so that they might once again drag records back to their lair.
As I stood on the steps of the ‘mall’ where the show is held, waiting for the doors to open, scanning my fellow attendees, I thought that I would be unable to follow through on my hypothesis. Fortunately, once I got inside, to the actual record show, the ‘sampling’ evened out somewhat, providing much needed balance and my faith in humanity (or the dark little corner of it inhabited by record collectors) was restored.
Sure, the crowd was close to 99.9 percent male, and, thanks to the unpleasantly close quarters in which one is forced to dig, almost as smelly, but when afforded a moment to step back and soak in the scene, I realized that what I was looking at was a cross section of the ‘serious’ digger community, writ large. The age range stretched from teenagers to folks that remember what the Korean War was like (firsthand). There were doowoppers, Beatle-haircut guys (split evenly between actual “butcher-cover” grippers and garage punkers), serious (like extra-continental) out of towners from the UK and Japan, your hippity-hoppers, your blues 78 cats, soul and funk diggers, serious DJs (I had a chance to say hi to two of New York’s heaviest, Mr. Finewine and Mr. Robinson) and tons of non-descript minglers, providing the caulk binding the stylistic tiles in the room.
Something else I saw, at least on the ‘meta’ level was hundreds of hardcore music lovers. There was almost as much conversation – with old friends and new catching up and trading stories – as there was actual digging.
There’s nothing quite like moving around a tightly packed record convention – especially one like the all-45/78 show, which tends to pull in the heavy hitters – and watching the faces of people extracting a long-sought 45 from a stack of thousands, or wading through a pile of prospects with a portable turntable.
When I go to a show like this, I tend to work the middle ground, avoiding the huge, disheveled piles of randomly packed 45s, as well as the boxes where there isn’t a record to be found selling for less than one hundred dollars.
When you survey a show like this, you realize that there are people working all over the financial spectrum. You tend to hear stories about pre-show horse trading (sometimes back at the hotel the night before, sometimes – as I saw this time – out of the back seats of cars in the parking lot), and as I said before, there’s everything from heaps of cheap filler to boxes of ultra-rare gold, literally something for everyone.
No matter how much cultural snobbery there is, from both outside of and within the scene, the bottom line is that what you feel on your way out of a show like this is an atmosphere thick with satisfaction. Some of the people clutching a prized white whale that they’d been chasing (and saving for) for years, some with piles of things new to them that will provide hours of sonic exploration, and some (like me, for instance) with a little of both.
I can’t say that I scored any grails this time out (most of my remaining heavy wants are far outside my financial reach), but I did grab a couple of things from my want list, as well as a number of interesting things that I’d never heard before, which I’ll record, listen (and re-listen) to in the coming weeks and research as much as I can, eventually presenting them to you on one of the blogs.
Since I’m not done digimatizing the new stuff, the track I bring you this fine day is something I grabbed last year.
The 45 in question, ‘I Got a New Thing’ by Willie Smith, with an instrumental version on the flip credited to Cliff Driver’s Infernal Machine, is a rough and ready, bluesy funk 45. Featuring a tough, soulful vocal (Mr. Smith I presume?) and some fantastic guitar work (straight ahead, and wah-wah-i-fied), ‘I Got a New Thing’ is a serious, meat and potatoes slice of funk.
This is the kind of funk 45 that could really be used as an all-purpose stand in for the entire genre.
It’s funky (naturally).
Passably, but not slavishly James Brown-y (‘James Brown. Of All the James Browns in the world, you’re the James Brown-iest‘*).
Packed with all the proper signifiers, i.e. heavy drums, chank guitar, organ, brass punctuation and soul shouts.
And, at least in this case, largely anonymous.
Aside from the New York City address on the label (which, considering the concentration of the record biz in NYC – at least back in the day –means nothing at all) I can’t tell you much about the record in question.
The instro dub on the flip, is pretty much a straight lift of the bed from the vocal version, with a honking sax-o-ma-phone solo running around where the voice used to be. I think I prefer the vocal version, but the instrumental side is nothing to sniff at.
I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with something groovy.
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