La May – Free the Soul Man
Listen/Download – La May – Free the Soul Man
Greetings all.
I just got in from mowing the lawn and I figured I’d steal some time in which to blogify, as it were.
Got me a busy shed-jool this week, so I’m trying to keep things going as smoothly as possible. In addition to the real world shit I have going every week, I have a normal blogging schedule, as well as preparation for next week’s Funky16Corners 2010 Pledge Drive. Things are moving along at a brink place, but I really need to keep my ducks in a row or else the chaos that is always on my tail is likely to overtake me and bollix up the whole deal.
The tune I bring you today is something I picked up a while back in an e-dig. After hearing a sound clip I made my bid, and fortunately for me, this record is either slept on, or does not meet the strict requirements of the funk 45 diggers of the world, because I ended up getting it for a (relative) pittance.
‘Free the Soul Man’ by La May is – I suspect, since I haven’t been able to date it conclusively – a mid-to-late 70s side created by someone (La May, I assume) who was likely the president of the local James Brown appreciation society. Like some Lee Fields (and others, I’m sure) 45s of a similar vintage, what you are hearing is something like the wake of the SS Soul Brother Number One, piloted by its funky captain who’s influence was for a time so wide ranging as to be almost inescapable (and La May clearly did not escape).
‘Free the Soul Man’, has some tight snappy drums, and a JB-esque vocal, but it also bears the mark of a later production era (as well as some synthesizers), so much so that I imagine that some of the crate diggers out there with impossibly high standards of the grit level in a funk 45 might not dig it, hearing something that is less gut-bucket than it is sequins and jheri curl and being drawn in by the orbit of the Disco Death Star.
This is not to say that ‘Free the Soul Man’ is disco, on account of it isn’t. It’s clearly funk, and even though some of those Mothership/FONK signifiers are there, the production is so enamored of James Brown that no matter how moogy/arpy things get, the good foot is still in the picture.
As far as provenance, SPQR – in its earlier days a storied R&B and soul label out of southern Virginia (with acts like Jimmy Soul, Lenis Guess and Sir Guy) – seems to have been reactivated in the 70s, since the discographies I’ve been able to find for the label seem to trail off before the end of the 60s. The label says that the tune was recorded in New York City at Guess Recording Studio (Lenis Guess???), but the label address is – as in the old days – Norfolk, VA.
If anyone knows more about La May, or the later years of the SPQR label, please drop me a line.
See you on Friday.
Peace
Larry
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Themocracy
thanks for that:fat & hip’funk’beat’hop , nice &raw tune !
I bet it was big in Europe.
I just visited LaMay about two weeks ago he is my brother and this song didn’t come out until sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s when James Brown was in lock up.