Earl King

Listen/Download – Earl King – Tic Tac Toe

 

Greetings all.

I’m sitting here, and it’s early. No one (except the kids, natch) has had enough sleep, but it’s relatively quiet so I figured I’d better get some writing in before the day gets rolling.
The summer – bracketed by Memorial Day and Labor Day – is almost over, and that, surprisingly enough, is a good thing.

Labor Day is approaching, and with it comes the exodus of the tourists. This glorious occasion is followed by a month of great weather, a serious drop in traffic and crowds, and with it the gradual restoration of my peace of mind (which seems in constant danger of extinction).
The tune I bring you today is a kicking slice of New Orleans funk, with as solid a pedigree as these things ever have.

The artist in question is the mighty Earl King.

You do not know him?

I say ‘au contraire, mon frere!’, because while Earl King may not have had any big hits, he was directly or indirectly responsible for many great pieces of music, including Professor Longhair’s legendary ‘Big Chief’ (which King wrote and sang on), the blues/soul standards  ‘Come On’ (which Jimi Hendrix covered on ‘Electric Ladyland’) and ‘Trick Bag’, in addition to being an indispensable part of New Orleans music in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

One need only dip into their New Orleans crates (you can substitute theoretical boxes of New Orleans 45s if you don’t have real ones) and see how many great records were either recorded by King, or bear the mark of his pen and/or performance (often under his real name, Earl Johnson).

The tune I bring you today is one of the few vinyl remnants of a 1970 King session, helmed by no less a light than Allen Toussaint and backed by a certain local combo called the Meters. This conglomeration recorded an album’s worth of material, but since a satisfactory deal never materialized, all that ever saw the light of day at the time was a few 45s.
One of these, ‘Street Parade’ (on the hard-to-find Kansu label) was featured in this space back in ought-seven. As Mardi Gras tributes go, they don’t get much better (or funkier) than ‘Street Parade’.

‘Tic Tac Toe’ which hails from the same sessions is lyrically uninspiring (pretty much standard issue dance craze boilerplate) but King is in fine voice, and the backing band featuring most of the Meters (Dan Phillips at the mighty ‘Home of the Groove’ noted previously that Art Neville’s keyboards seem to be MIA) is tight.

There’s a great, repeated bass guitar riff that kind of pushes the rhythm, Zig Modeliste’s snappy drums, and a nice horn chart riding in the background.

Despite the uninspired lyrics, it’s always great to hear King’s voice, and in the end what you are supposed be doing with this record is dancing, not parsing the meaning of the words, so take it all as a very groovy whole, and shake your thing a little bit.

I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with something mellow.

Peace

Larry

Check out the Funky16Corners Store at Cafe Press

PS Head over to Iron Leg for a Lennon/McCartney tune.

 

2 Responses to “Earl King – Tic Tac Toe”

1. alejandro says:

   August 22, 2010 at 7:19 pm

   What a sweet intro/riff with those drums and that guitar!!Great tune. Thanks, as always.

2. Alex says:

   August 23, 2010 at 5:26 pm

   Wow. Sounds great! Dig those Ziggy drums!