Joe Simon

Listen/Download Joe Simon Band – Oon-Guela (High Life) Pt1

Listen/Download Joe Simon Band – Oon-Guela (High Life) Pt2

Greetings all

The end of the week is within our grasp, which means that the Funky16Corners Radio Show (brought to you every Friday night at 9PM on Viva Radio) is nigh. Perk up your ears, dial up the old crystal set and drop by for the finest in funk, soul, jazz and rare groove, all from vinyl. If you cannot join me at the time of broadcast you can always subscribe to the show as a podcast in iTunes, or grab an MP3 download over at the blog.

The tune I bring you today is a real gasser, hepped to me by my friend Don Waller, who sent it along on Facebook as a birthday wish.

Though I certainly knew of Joe Simon, I had no idea that there were any records released under the ‘Joe Simon Band’ name, and certainly nothing as crazy as today’s selection.

‘Oon-Guela (High Life) Pts 1&2’ was released in 1969, and it is like nothing else in the Joe Simon catalog.

What you get here is an amped up take on the Afro funk sound, with lots of hard-edged, funky guitar, percussion (there’s either a kalimba or something trying to sound like one running under the whole record) and bass that almost crosses over into psychedelic territory a few times.

This really is an unusual record, especially considering when it came out (not a whole lot of Afro anything, aside from Hugh Masekela) and that it was released in association with Joe Simon.

Simon had a long string of R&B and Pop hits from 1965 to 1981, hitting R&B #1 a few times (including once in 1969 with his version of the country standard ‘The Choking Kind’, which fell only a few catalog numbers below this very record).

‘Oon Guela (High Life)’ is waaay out of (sonic) character for Simon which leads one to wonder, what – in fact – would be the dealio.

I have not been able to discover that fact, and am currently happy just to groove on the sound of the record.

It is both groovy, and anomalous.

If anyone has anything to add, please do so in the comments.

I’ll see you all on Monday.

Keep the faith

Larry

 

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