Funky16Corners

Incredible Bongo Band – Let There Be Drums

By Larry, December 4, 2012 3:48 pm

Drummers Jim Gordon (left) and King Errison (right)

~~Listen/Download Incredible Bongo Band – Let There Be Drums~~

Greetings all

Welcome to the middle of another spectacularly crisp, post-Thanksgiving, pre-Yule day.

The tune I bring you today is a little something I grabbed on a recent dig, and on object lesson in how sometimes you really don’t need to hear a record to know it’s going to be good.

Any beat fiend worth their wax is already hip to the sounds of the Incredible Bongo Band, especially their version of Jerry Lordan’s oft-recorded ‘Apache’, one of the ur documents of hip hop.

The IBB’s first LP ‘Bongo Rock’ is fairly rare and sought after, mainly for ‘Apache’.

However, there is much to dig on ‘Bongo Rock’, up to and including the album’s opening track (and one of its singles), which you see before you presently, ‘Let There Be Drums’.

Like many of the tunes on ‘Bongo Rock’, ‘Let There Be Drums’ is a cover, in this case of Sandy Nelson’s 1961 hit.

Written by Nelson and producer/writer/guitarist Richie Podolor, ‘Let There Be Drums’ was, like so much of Nelson’s catalog, a percussion feature meant to highlight his skill on the skins.

Since the IBB was a similar showcase (created by producer Michael Viner), this time for drummer Jim Gordon and percussionist King Errison, the recordings were aimed in the same general direction.

‘Let There Be Drums’ may lack the crisp breakbeats of ‘Apache’ there are still plenty of slamming drums (do you ever really ever get sick of walls of well recorded drums?) and some cool guitar.

As far as I can tell ‘Let There Be Drums’ was only sampled in 2007 by Buck 65 on the track ‘Dang’.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all on Friday.

Keep the faith

Larry

___________________________________________________________________________________________