Donnie Burks

Listen/Download – Donnie Burks – The Gopher

Listen/Download – Donnie Burks – Funky Funky Woman

Greetings all.
I come to you, secure in the refrigerated Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcast Nerve Center, where I’m currently hiding from the near 100 degree weather outside.
I’ve spent the afternoon, digimatizing vinyl, ripping old CDs onto the new iPod and trying to refile records.
I was going to write about something else today, but I decided to do a little more research on that particular selection, so today’s numbers moved to the front of the line.
I found this record last Record Store Day in Asbury Park, and despite the fact that the artist was unknown to me, I grabbed it as it was both cheap, and intriguing.
I’d never heard of Donnie Burks before, but he looked vaguely familiar, and the record appeared to be American soul recorded (or at least released) in Europe, so I slapped a couple of semolians on the barrelhead and took the record home.
As soon as I set to Googling, I discovered a couple of very interesting things.
Donnie Burks, though fairly obscure as a singer, had a multi-layered career in his lifetime, starting out as a college basketball star, and moving on to appear in movies and on the Broadway stage.
When he passed away in 2008 at the age of 66, his glory days were long behind him.
It turns out that the reason he was familiar to me was that he had appeared as the grapes in a famous string of Fruit of the Loom underwear commercials (in which a group of dudes in fruit costumes touted the brand as a facsimile of the cornucopia in its logo).
Burks first came to prominence playing basketball for St John’s University in the late 50s and early 60s. He went on to appear in movies (The Pawnbroker, Shaft, Without a Trace*) and TV, as well as in a number of Broadway musicals (Hair, the Tap Dance Kid).
I have no idea how he came to record the album that gives us today’s track, but I have seen listings that suggest that he recorded at least two other 45s  for the Decca and Metromedia labels.
The tunes I bring you today, ‘The Gopher’ and ‘Funky Funky Woman’ come from the ‘Swingin’ Sounds of Soul’ LP. ‘The Gopher’ a cool, uptempo soul dancer. The production isn’t the best, but Burkes was a more than able singer and I’d be interested to hear his other 45s.
‘Funky Funky Woman’ carries the DNA of ‘Funky Broadway’, but it sounds as if it were strained through ‘Boogaloo Down Broadway’ first. Not terribly funky, but if I had a nickel for every record I’ve seen with ‘funky’ in the title, that isn’t (funky, that is), I’d have a huge, shiny pile of nickels.
I’d also love to know how Burks ended up recording (or at least releasing) an album in Germany. He was in the original Broadway cast of ‘Hair’ and the likely vintage of these recordings makes me wonder if he didn’t record it while overseas with a touring cast of the show. If anyone knows, please drop me a line.
I hope you dig the tunes, and I’ll see you all on Wednesday.

Peace

Larry

*He’s a little hard to nail down via IMDB since he appears to be listed under a few different spellings of his name.

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PS Head over to Iron Leg for a groovy instrumental

2 Responses to “Donnie Burks – The Gopher / Funky Funky Woman”

1. Bill says:

   July 25, 2010 at 3:00 pm

   Hi Larry,

   Try googling Donny Burks !

   Best regards
   Bill

2. Bob Johnson says:

   October 6, 2010 at 6:39 pm

   I was a friend and co-writer/performer with Donnie on the Metromedia 45 “I Was Satisfied.” Would really be interested to know what label in Europe and the year it was released.

   DB, as I used to call him, was a good friend and talented guy.