F16C Soul Club Presents – Vincent the Soul Chef – I Learned It By Watching You
Playlist
Intro-Partnership for a drug-free America PSA circa 1987
01 Stanga-Little Sister (Stone Flower)
02 Disco Kid-Funkhouse Express (Disko)
03 Get Down-Kay Gees (Gang)
04 Supersound-Jimmy Castor Bunch (Atlantic)
05 Funky Granny-Kool & The Gang (De-Lite)
06 Funk To The Folks-Creative Source (Sussex)
07 Everybody Needs Sonebody-King Floyd (Chimneyville)
08 The Funky Robot Pt. 1-Dave Cortez (All Platinum)
09 Take Me Back-Syl Johnson (Twinight)
10 Tell Me What You Want-Jimmy Ruffin (Chess)
11 Right On Right On Right On-Milt Grayson (Peak)
12 30 60 90-Willie Mitchell (Hi)
13 Whatever Happened To Superman-Captain Freak & The Lunacycle Band (Phil LA Of Soul)
14 Lily-Manu Dibango (Atlantic)
15 The Girl From Kenya-Fabulous Counts (Moira)
16 Everybody Wants To Be Free-Amnesty (Lamp/Now-Again)
17 I Got So Much Trouble On My Mind Pt. 2-Joe Quarterman (GSF)
18 Wind Your Clock-Naomi Davis (Daptone)
19 I’m The Man-Chris Jones (Goodie Train)
20 Sophisticated Sissy-Rufus Thomas (Stax)
21 The Chop-Privates Hammond Orchestra (Starla)
22 The Funky Judge (Instrumental)-Bull & The Matadors (Toddlin’ Town)
Endtro-Partnership for a drug-free America PSA circa 1987
I hope the new week finds you all well.
The mix you see before you is the newest installment in the groovy juggernaut known as the Funky16Corners Soul Club.
The name of the mixer should be familiar to fans of soul and funk blogging, that being the mighty Vincent the Soul Chef of Fufu Stew. I’ve known Vincent for a few years now, and can tell you from personal experience that he knows his shit, can handle a couple of turntables with the best of them, and has exquisite taste in music (which when you get down to it is really the bedrock).
What the Soul Chef has cooked up for us is over an hour of tasty funk – a bouillabaisse if you will – composed of breaks, beats, thumping bass, wah wah guitar and vocals, with ingredients foraged in New Jersey, DC, San Fran, Memphis, New Orleans, Chitown and many points in between.
Vincent uses only the freshest funk, prepared with skill and whisked to your table so you might fill up on the good stuff.
I’ve given this one a couple of spins, and I’m sure you’ll dig it.
So fix yourself a plate, and make sure to head over to Fufu Stew.
F16C Soul Club Presents – Tony C: Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky
Playlist
Pyrahnna Sound-La Turbie Pyrahanienne-Sound
John Schroeder-Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag-Marble Arch
Bobby Hutcherson-Rain Every Thursday-Blue Note
Yusef Lateef-Bishop School-Atlantic
Jean King-The In Crowd-HBR
Ray Johnson-Funky Way-Inarts
Jackie Paine-Go Go Train-Jetstream
Betty Harris-Ride Your Pony-Sansu
Georgie Fame-Last Night-International
Lebron Bros-Proud Mary-Cotique
Bamboos of Jamaica-Hard to Handle-Hansa
Cher-For What It’s Worth-Atco
Mary Holmes-Soul Brother-Nassau
Jimmie Willis-Soul Power-ORR
Cliff Sabb-The Mule-Roulette
Pacers-Skeeter Dope-Alley
Soul Inheritors-Eleanor Rigby pt 2-Jerhart
The Packers-Pure Soul-Puresoul
Katie Webster-Hell or High Water-Goldband
Frank Howard & the Continentals-Do what You Wanna Do-Deluxe
Johnny Blue-Crazy Crazy-Friar
Nu Sound Express-Ain’t It Good Enough-Silver Dollar
Ray Weatherspoon-Stop Stuffin and Start Sho Nuffin-Satan
I hope the new week finds you all well.
Just for the record, my lovely wife has returned home from the hospital, sore and fatigued but on her way to recovery.
I realized last night (after I had already retired for the evening) that I had forgotten to post the mixed MP3 of this weeks Funky16Corners Radio Show from Viva internet radio, so I have done so. It’s an all-Lou Courtney special, and you might want to give it a listen because the fidelity problems caused by the Viva interface have been corrected in the mix. There’s a lot of great music in there, so give it a listen when you get a chance.
Today marks the return of the Funky16Corners Soul Club with a fantastic contribution from my man in the UK, Tony Crampton. A former contributor to Jazz Syndicate Radio (for whom I contributed a guest mix way back when) and respected club DJ, Tony is also a man with impeccable musical taste.
As I’ve mentioned in this space more than once, Tony has a great ear for funk and soul and has many a time turned me on to cool things I hadn’t yet heard.
Mr. Crampton works from a wide ranging palette, including library music, Latin sounds, R&B, funk and soul, and his mixes are always filled with all kinds of wonderful surprises.
This one is no exception, with soul sounds from New Orleans, Jamaica, the UK and all over the USA.
So, pull down those ones and zeros and dig in, on account of everything Tony C does is indeed funky.
See you later in the week.
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.
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.
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