Comments (3)
JJ Barnes
Listen/Download – JJ Barnes – Don’t Bring Me No Bad News
Seriously. No more this week. PLEASE.
Peace
Larry
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Vida Blue (top), Albert Jones (bottom left), Choker Campbell (bottom right)
Listen/Download – Albert Jones – Vida Blue
Greetings all.
The tune I bring you today is something that found its way into my ears in a rather roundabout way.
A while back, my man DJ Prestige traveled over to the UK, and while he was there he did some digging (natch) and sat in with UK legend DJ Andy Smith on his radio show. It was during that show that he spun a couple of his UK finds, one of which was today’s selection. I dug the tune a lot, so I set out in search of my own copy, and fortunately I turned one up rather quickly (and cheaply).
The tune in question, ‘Vida Blue’ by Albert Jones (from 1971) is a stomping funk tribute to the early 70s Oakland A’s hurler of the same name.
Jones was a Detroit area singer who recorded for a number of labels including Tri City, Bump Shop, Kapp (one of the Kapp 45s duplicated material originally released on Tri City) and Candy Apple from the late 60s to the mid 70s. Much of his work was under the auspices of Walter ‘Choker’ Campbell, a saxophonist/bandleader who recorded a number of records under his own name before going to work running the Motown road band, eventually recording for the label as well.
After Campbell left Motown, he started his own set of labels, including Tri City. Moonville, and Ultra City, with artists like Jones, Betty Renay, the Soul Merchants (I’m not sure if this is the same group that recorded for the Stax subsidiary Weis Records) and Lee Moore.
Albert Jones recorded four singles for Tri City, the last of which was ‘Vida Blue’.
Oddly enough, the flip side of this 45 is a country version of the same song by a singer named Tom Newton. Since the single was released to capitalize on the popularity of the ball player, it seems likely that the genre switch on the flip was engineered to double the chances that the record might be a hit (though I can imagine most people – like myself – being surprised one way or the other when they flipped the record over).
The Albert Jones side is tight, and to be honest, where else are you going to hear a funk 45 that namechecks Harmon Killebrew and Carl Yastrzemski?
Jones would go on to record a full LP (‘The Facts of Life’) for the Campbell and the Candy Apple label in 1977. One of the tracks from that LP, ‘Mother Nature’ was later sampled by Common for the song ‘Be’.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.
Peace
Larry
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Funk, Funk 45, Funky16Corners, Soul, Soul 45
| 
Funk, Funky16Corners, Soul
The Mighty Wayne Cochran!!
Listen/Download – Wayne Cochran – Goin’ Back to Miami
Greetings all.
Hey everybody!
Welcome to the new week.
Is everyone ready to get their eyebrows singed?
In the many years (decades) that I’ve been chasing records, there are records that I will seek forever, ultimately unrequited.
Then, with a tip of the chapeau to the supernatural, there are the records that are meant to be mine, pushed into my view, and delivered to my crates by the intervention of what the denizens of the mystic east once referred to as kismet.
Today’s selection is one of them.
Not too long ago, I purchased a video collection of performances from a Detroit dance party show, mainly because it featured video of one of my all time faves, the mighty Jerry-O. So, some time goes by and eventually the DVD popped through the mailslot, after which I had only to wait for some of that good ‘alone’ time, on account of nobody else in this crib has the slightest interest in watching fuzzy, third generation bootleg video of people they don’t know, lip-synching on a long forgotten TV show while a bunch of bored teenagers do the frug in the background.
That time finally came, and I settled in with a cold drink and some potato chips to enhance the viewing experience.
Things started out well enough, with some footage of Detroit garage greats the Rationals (I’m a big garage punk fan, too) and rolled right along to a variety of 1966/67 stuff, all groovy. In fact there were (including today’s selection) no less than three mindbending revelations (for me anyway) that will all appear in this space in the weeks to come.
Anyway, I’m really digging this video, when who should pop up on the screen but my old fave, Mr Wayne Cochran.
If you don’t know Wayne Cochran, you really ought to, because in the annals of whiteboy soul, Wayne and his giant, psychedelic mushroom cloud of a hairdo cast a big shadow. When you first see film of him performing it is immediately clear that he was trying his damndest to be the white, chubbsy-ubbsy James Brown (circa 1965), but when you have the chance to soak in the breadth of his catalog you begin to realize that he was something more than that, i.e. possessed of a genuinely unique, remarkably enthusiastic take on rock and soul music.
Anyway, I was watching the video, and then the host of the show introduces Wayne and says that he’s going to do a song called ‘Goin’ Back to Miami’.
“OK”, I thought. “I’ve never heard this one before”.
Then, in a flash, the entire landscape of Cochranistan underwent a radical change, erupting in a white hot blast of flame that pretty much knocked me on my ass.
I mean, holy flaming fuckballs…I’d heard a lot of Wayne Cochran, but none of it, no matter how right, tight and out of sight came within a mile of ‘Goin’ back to Miami’.
It was as if Wayne got ahold of Otis’s ‘I Can’t Turn You Loose’, poured rocket fuel all over it and threw a match on it.
BLAMMO!!!
My eyes were rolling, my hair was standing on end and the musical card catalog in my head was upended and spilled on the floor, never to be properly shuffled again.
There was Wayne, poured into a suit three sizes too small, swiveling about the stage while the band, complete with capes (no shit!) work it out behind him.
There’s a video out there of Cochran performing this same song live on the Jackie Gleason show, with Wayne in a suit the color of a key lime pie absolutely burning up the stage, working the call and response with the band, that has to be the craziest thing Gleason ever whipped on the folks at home. It’s not hard to picture some old guy smacking the side of his TV set wondering what the fuck had gone wrong.
So, once things came to a halt, I tore into the interwebs in search of a vinyl copy of same.
Imagine the depth of my crestfallen-ness when I came up snake eyes.
No matter where I looked – aside from CD comps – I could not locate ‘Goin’ Back to Miami’ anywhere.
I saved the search, and went back and assuaged myself by playing the video repeatedly.
A few days later, I repeated my search and found a copy, up for auction, with one bid (standing at 99 cents) from a seller who lived about five minutes from my house.
I assumed that the first bidder must have laid down a serious chunk of change, so I entered a significant maximum bid, instantly driving the price up to the princely sum of one dollar and thirty seven cents (!?!?) which is where it stayed until the auction ended, with yours truly the victor (to whom, according to legend, belong the spoils*).
It was as if the keeper of the great book of vinyl suddenly noticed a forgotten, dog-eared page, opened it and discovered that it had been written that this very banger of a 45 was destined for my record box, and with a wave of his hand (or magic wand, or tone arm), made it so.
A few days later the 45 hopped out of the mailbox and into my greedy meathooks right onto the turntable, and the next thing you know, abba-zabba, zip-a-dee-doo-dah, biff-bang-pow, I’m playing it, and replaying it at the kind of high volume generally reserved for amped up teenagers, the hard of hearing and those of us swept up in a transformative religious experience (my case being the latter).
And so, I placed it on the platter and let the wonderfulness flow up through the stylus where it passed into the computer, transmuted into the ones and zeros of legend so that this two minutes and forty seconds of nuthouse soul might be shared with you all.
So strap yourself in, crank up the volume and let it rip.
You will not be disappointed.
I promise.
You can thank me later.
Peace
Larry
*This particular scenario has played itself out, in very similar ways, many times before. Enough so, that were I a superstitious/religious type I might be inclined to suspect some kind of divine intervention.
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Foster Sylvers
Listen/Download – Foster Sylvers – Misdemeanor
Greetings all.
I come to you this midweek with something groovy.
Last year during one of my DJ trips down to Washington, DC the mighty DJ Birdman was gracious enough to take me hither and yon, over both hill and dale for some of the best digging I’ve done in a long time.
Though the District of Columbia is the capitol of our great country, it should also be rechristened the Cheap Used LP Capitol of the East Coast. Though 45 come ups were few and far between – albeit quite rewarding when I did find them – the DC metro area is awash in bargain basement used LPs. When I finally got back to Jersey and opened the back of the Funky16Cornersmobile, I was almost (not completely, just almost) embarrassed by the huge stack of albums wedged between my duffel bag and my flight case.
In addition to a bunch of longtime wants, and a grip of stuff that Birdman was kind enough to turn me on to, I also brought back a couple of records I might have passed on, were they not priced between twenty-five cents and a dollar, rendering them all but irresistible.
One of these was the disc you see before you today, a record jammed into my digger’s memory bank by its constant appearances on other people’s finds lists.
Though I knew of the Sylvers (their ‘Boogie Fever’ was a huge AM radio hit back when I was a kid), I had no idea that Foster Sylvers had recorded – and had hits – on his own. The tune I bring you today was a hit (Top 10 R&B, Top 40 Pop) back in the Spring of 1973, eventually becoming an especially ripe bit of sample bait years later when it would be chopped and looped more than a dozen times for folks like Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D and eventually Aaliyah, which is likely why those in the crate digging set were sweating it so heavily (and why the LP often changes hands for between 30 and 40 bucks, the 45 sometimes going for more than that).
Now, I’m all over a sweet break when I hear it, having spent some time punishing a drum set in my youth. I’m not sampling or flipping anything myself, but there’s something magical about a great sample, even more so when the song it comes from is especially nice.
Such is the case with Foster Sylvers’ ‘Misdemeanor’. Taken at face value, ‘Misdemeanor’ is a pleasing bit of sweet sounding kiddie funk (Foster was all of 11 years old when the song hit the charts, come to think of it, so was I…). Affix your headphones and dig a little deeper into the track and I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised, since wrapped around Sylvers’ boyish vocals are all kinds of groovy sounds.
First off, the drums and bass are cracking, but close your eyes and sink into the arrangement and all of a sudden you’re digging the wild lead guitar snaking around the track, bits of celeste and percussion here and there, and a hypnotic rhythm guitar track that kind of rises and falls as the song progresses. The arrangement by Jerry Peters (who also co-produced the album) is really something else.
There are a few other interesting tracks on the album, but overall you have to remember that it was probably assembled for sale to whatever passed for ‘tweens’ back in 1973.
I hope you dig the track (give it a couple of close listens and see how it sneaks up on you), and I’ll be back later in the week.
Peace
Larry
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Digging, Funk, Funky16Corners, Soul
| Funk, Funky16Corners, Soul
Eddie Holland
Listen/Download – Eddie Holland – Leaving Here
Greetings all.
I hope you all had a good weekend.
I was recovering from yet another surgical adventure (expected if not planned) and walked out of the hospital knowing that there will be more in the future.
It’s not just that this has become a huge inconvenience, but even moreso a constant source of demoralization. I wouldn’t even mind that much of it didn’t require trips to the hospital, and usually anaesthesia. It always takes me a couple of days to get right after a procedure, thanks in large part to the haze that tends to follow you around after you’ve been put under. There isn’t even that much physical pain involved. I have a fairly high threshold for discomfort, but the pain in this case takes the form of a kind of wave of inconvenience, with people having to take off work, babysitters procured and an already tight schedule getting a couple of new speedbumps inserted into it.
I for one will be fine in a couple of days. The problems I have are not generally painful (providing that the proper medical steps have been taken) but I’m always haunted by the specter of another visit to the doctor/radiologist/hospital, which in most cases, I’d trade for a little actual pain.
My whining aside, I am spending the weekend (when this was written) chilling, doing nothing remotely strenuous and trying to get my brain back on the tracks.
The tune I bring you today has been a huge fave for decades, but it was a few years before I actually heard the version you see before you today.
Back in the garage/mod days, one of the really important UK R&Beat touchstones was the music of the Birds. If you paused for a second there, you’re not alone since the band in question existed during the same time period as the US Byrds (McGuinn, Clark, Hillman et al) and there was some legal friction when the US band alit in the UK.
Fortunately for the UK band, the few, brilliant records they created could never be confused with folk rock of any variety. The Birds laid down some of the heaviest, razor sharp versions of US R&B ever recorded, as well as a couple of well crafted originals, and eventually a bit of freakbeat to close things out.
One of their finest records, and a huge number among my crowd at the time was their version of Eddie Holland’s ‘Leaving Here’. The song was covered by some of their contemporaries as well, but nobody came within a mile of the Birds for pure heat.
My own band at the time, the Phantom Five tore up our own ragged but right version of ‘Leaving Here’ pretty much every time we plugged in.
As I stated previously, it was a few years before I heard the original, eventually picking it up on a ‘Hard to Find Motown’ CD comp that turned me on to a fair number of other classics. The song would eventually be covered by the Who, the Tages, Jimmy Hannah and the Dynamics (a personal fave) and eventually by Motorhead and Pearl Jam.
Truth be told, though I dug the Holland OG from the start, it was a few more years before it edged the Birds version out of my consciousness and took the lead.
It was a while (like two more decades) before I’d grab my own copy of the Holland 45, with the gods of the interwebs smiling on me as I picked it up for what the mighty Ralph Kramden once referred to as a ‘mere bag of shells’.
Holland was – of course – part of songwriting legends Holland/Dozier/Holland. Though all three members of the famous triumvirate recorded their own records, Eddie Holland was by far the most prolific, recording well over a dozen singles (mostly for UA and Motown) between 1958 and 1964. ‘Leaving Here’ (written by Holland and Lamont Dozier) was released in 1963, and while it didn’t make much of a dent Stateside, quickly became a fave of London’s R&B obsessed longhairs.
Eddie Holland’s original is a fast moving dancer with piano and horns providing the backing, and a prominent snare drum laying down the beat. Holland’s vocal is great, though it’s not hard to understand why he would have settled for a lucrative career as a composer and producer considering the talent he was surrounded by on a daily basis.
It’s a great soul dancer, and I hope you dig it as much as I do. I’ll be back later in the week with more music (and less complaining).
And, despite all the aggravation, know that I won’t be leaving here any time soon.
Peace
Larry
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Bob and Earl
Listen/Download -Bob and Earl – Baby, Your Time Is My Time
Greetings all.
I hope you’re all well.
The end of the week is here, and it behooves me to remind you that Friday night at 9PM (Eastern), if you’re huddled up against the computer screen for warmth, you should most definitely point your browser toward the Funky16Corners Radio Show on Viva internet radio (see snappy new link in the sidebar). This week’s show is the first in the new format, i.e. mixed and recorded live for your delectation. There are some hot cuts in there, so fall by if you’re in the e-neighborhood.
In other news, the end of May will see the return of the Funky16Corners annual pledge drive, and I have something big in the works. I can’t say much right now, but if all the ducks fall into line, I think you’ll dig what I have planned.
Today’s selection is something surprising (for me, anyway) that I picked up as part of a big lot of old 45s early last year.
I had bid on the lot to get my hands on a psych 45 that had long eluded me, and when the box showed up on my doorstep I was pleased to discover that it also included several other excellent records that I hadn’t been counting on.
If you’ve followed the blog over the years, you’ll already know that I’m down with the whole Mirwood bag, especially the rotating cast of characters that was really just two cats, i.e. Bob and Earl (aka Bob Relf and Earl Nelson, aka Jackie Lee and on and on etc etc).
I won’t rehash the whole shebang here, except to say that I’ve come to the point in my life where Mirwood has become something of a dependable brand, i.e. if it’s on the label and I don’t know, I’m going to grab it all the same.
When I pulled Bob and Earl’s ‘Baby, Your Time Is My Time’ out of that big carton it was unsleeved, and as the scan above (and a listen to the recording) reveals, the tiniest bit road weary.
That said, it was not a song that I knew, but as soon as I gave it a spin, it became a fave.
The vast majority of the Bob and Earl/Jackie Lee sides I own are upbeat dancers. When I dropped the needle on ‘Baby, Your Time Is My Time’ I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the pair were also capable of turning out sophisticated soul as well.
‘Baby…’, written by Relf, Nelson and label honcho Fred Smith is a mid tempo number with an absolutely stellar arrangement, with the silky strings, vibe accents, understated horns and of course great singing.
There’s a point about halfway through where things threaten to pick up speed, but a horn break and some bluesy guitar downshift, and things get right back into the groove.
It’s a really great side.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday.
Peace
Larry
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Listen/Download -The Uptights – You Git’s None of This
Greetings all.
I come to you in-midweek with a very cool 45 I picked up at the Allentown, all-45 show.
I was flipping through a couple of boxes of records at the table of a dealer that I’ve been seeing at Allentown for years, who usually brings a less expensive, but always interesting selection to the show.
It was the Skye label that caught my eye first. Skye was owned/operated by heavies like Cal Tjader, Gary McFarland and Gabor Szabo, and over the years I’ve always tried to grab their stuff whenever I came across it in the field. Aside from the three principals listed above, Skye released albums by Lena Horne, Armando Peraza, Grady Tate, and the psyche pop of Wendy and Bonnie (among others).
Even if the Skye name meant nothing to me, I very well would have picked up the record in question, on account of what crate digger worth their salt could in good conscience pass up something called ‘You Git’s None of This’ by a group called the Uptights?
I couldn’t.*
I got the record out to the car, and discovered not a funk 45, but rather a powerful southern soul ballad with a fantastic lead vocal. There’s some gospel piano, subtle electric piano accents, horns and backing vocals that sound like the Sweet Inspirations. It has the sound of something written in the Memphis/Muscle Shoals style, but clearly recorded in either New York or Los Angeles.
But guess what?
I can find out NOTHING about the Uptights.
There is a Skye discography that dates the session to 1970, but nothing else. There are so few 45-only artists on the label (all of the other Skye 45s I’ve found are LP tracks) that you have to wonder not only who the Uptights were, but how they ended up on Skye.
Were they backup singers for a bigger artist’s session who impressed someone at the label? A nightclub act that someone saw and brought to Skye?
I just don’t know.
The publishing info on the label doesn’t turn up anything either. There are dozens of ‘Poindexters’ in the BMI database, but no first initials listed on the label.
The song itself (trying multiple variations in the spelling) fails to bring up any hits either.
I’m stumped, which sucks since I love this record and wish I could find the back-story, but it would appear that this isn’t going to happen today.
As always, I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back on Friday with something cool.
Peace
Larry
*UPDATE – BIG thanks to my Facebook friend Joe Cristando who suggested to me that the vocalist on this 45 may in fact be Doris Duke, who recorded another 45 with a group called the Uptights (“Shy Guy”) in 1967. Sure sounds like her to me!
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The Master: Norman Whitfield
Listen/Download -Norman Whitfield and Rose Royce – Water
Listen/Download -Norman Whitfield and Rose Royce – Sunrise
Greetings all.
I hope you’re all well, and ready to dig into something interesting.
A few weeks back on Record Store Day, I headed in Asbury Park to see my man DJ Prestige lay down an in-store set at Hold Fast. I grabbed some cool looking LPs on the cheap, one of which was the soundtrack to ‘Car Wash’. It certainly seemed like it was worth it, if only for the title track by Rose Royce.
Well, I get home and hook up the turntable for a marathon digi-ma-tizing session, and soon discovered that the ‘Car Wash’ OST was a much deeper beat that I could have imagined.
The album credits the compositions, production and arrangement all to the mighty Norman Whitfield, and the playing to the band Rose Royce (who Whitfield found when they were backing Edwin Starr).
Anyway, while needle dropping my way through the two LPs, I discovered a couple of really cool instrumentals, both clearly the work of the man who created several psyched out/atmospheric epics when he was working at Motown.
What really struck me was how much of the sound of these two songs, though recorded in 1976, linked back to Whitfield’s 1970 era productions, blending them with a touch of blaxploitation soundtrack feel. I haven’t seen ‘Car Wash’ in years, but these tracks, ‘Water’ and ‘Sunrise’ make me want to check it out to see how they were used in the film.
The first of these ‘Water’ is really more of a short vamp/theme stretched out for three and a half minutes, which is kind of what you’d expect to hear as background in a motion picture. There are some vocals in the beginning, but they’re no more prominent that the repeated bass, piano and guitar lines that run almost constantly through the piece, interrupted only by a short string drop (which at times is reminiscent of ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’) and the occasional harp flourish (same there). Things do pick up a little at about the two minute mark, with the addition of some funky bass, but settle right back into the groove before long.
The real treat here is the almost eleven minute epic ‘Sunrise’. The tune starts out with someone working a ride cymbal like a gong, and then the unusual (incongruous) sound of a trumpet running a scale, quickly breaking out into something that would have sounded perfect behind Shaft as he stalked an evildoer through the back alleys of some urban hellhole.
Whitfield builds the song, layer by layer, with the bass, strings, tight, snapping drums, guitar, and then electric piano and horns. There are in fact two different electric pianos, alternating between a lighter, tinkling riff, and a one playing a much more wide open, molasses thick chord. The use of hand drums as accents, as well as occasional bursts of wah-wah guitar drop in like carefully placed exclamation points.
It’s a very tasty jam, and the arrangement/production by Whitfield is next level. There’s no doubt in my mind that ‘Sunrise’ would have fit in perfectly (with lyrics added of course) on any of the early 70s Temptations LPs.
The sad thing is, that Whitfield – in my eyes nothing less than a soulful visionary – after the early 90s backed away from the console, not doing much of anything in his final years. It’s not like he didn’t have a remarkable body of work behind him already, especially his mid-60s to early 70s Motown sessions as songwriter, producer and arranger, but you can’t help but wonder what he might have done with some of the nu-soul crowd.
That said, I hope you dig the tracks, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.
Peace
Larry
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Listen/Download -Hank Herb – Ali Funky Thing Pt1
Listen/Download -Hank Herb – Ali Funky Thing Pt2
Greetings all.
I hope that the end of the week finds you well.
Me, not so much… I have been assailed by a bug that has left me feverish and singularly unmotivated. Had I not experience the tiniest bit of improvement as the day wore on, I wouldn’t be posting at all. But you know how I am, neither rain, nor sleet or whatever…
I’ll start with a bit of news, that bring that the Funky16Corners Radio Show on Viva internet radio just got a prime timeslot upgrade, and will now be airing Friday evenings at 9PM EST. I’ve been doing this show for a while now, but got bumped out of my original slot and into a severely crappy one. That has now been remedied, and there will be some changes in the offing. Thanks to the completion of the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcasting Nerve Center, all of my shows at Viva (starting with next week 4/30) will be recorded and mixed live on the old ones and twos. I have yet to work out getting the spoken parts done that way (right now I record them after I’m done) but I will try to figure it out.
So, if you’re hanging at home (or god forbid, the office) at 9PM on Friday, tune us in over the interwebs for the best in funk, soul, jazz and rare groove.
The tune I bring you today is a bit of a mystery. I can’t honestly remember where I picked this 45 up (though I’m certain it was an E-dig), I do remember getting it home and scratching my head a bit.
The record in question is ‘Ali, Funky Thing Pts 1&2’ by Hank Herb. The record is also (quite clearly to anyone that’s heard the OG) ‘Al, Funky Thing’ by Chuck Cornish (sampled by Cypress Hill). Why this was pressed and credited to the pseudonymous Mr. Herb (they still give songwriting credit to Chuck Cornish, and it’s on the ‘Chuck’ label), I have no earthly idea. I’m sure I thought I was getting some obscure cover version (of an already obscure song) when in fact I was getting the same exact record on a different label.
I don’t know much about Chuck Cornish. He was from New Orleans, and he only recorded a handful of 45s. One of these, the laid back but funky ‘Blue Eye Brother and Soul Get Along’ was featured in this space a few years ago and is a fave.
‘Ali, Funky Thing’ is as you might expect, a funky tribute to the boxing great, with some fantastic twangy guitar and a great horn section. Other than that, as Gertrude Stein once said of her childhood home, ‘There’s no there there’. If anyone has any more info, as to Cornish, or why this was issued in the form you see before you today, please drop me a line.
I’m going to bed.
Have a great weekend.
Peace
Larry
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Funky16Corners Radio v.85 – Open For Business
Playlist
Listen/Download 90MB/256KB Mixed MP3
Welcome back to the ongoing saga of the Funky16Corners blog, its author, a huge, ever-pulsing mountain of records and his efforts to rein it all in and make some sense of it (both physically and philosophically).
I spent the first part of the weekend checking out the mighty DJ Prestige doing an in-store set at Hold Fast in Asbury Park, while also (of course) picking up a handful of LPs to celebrate Record Store Day. Pres brought the heat (as expected) and then the fam and I headed out for some of those good Long Branch hot dogs and a couple of other errands, followed by some serious work in the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcasting Nerve Center.
The renovation is almost done, with some fine tuning remaining here and there, with the disposal of much trash yet to be completed (I suspect a trip or two to the town dump maybe in order). After undoing a veritable Gordian knot of old-school computer equipment (as well as moving/storing a huge amount of data, most of it blog-related, onto a new 1TB drive), it’ll all have to be reconfigured over the next few days. I have my work cut out for me, but things are going to be so much easier when I’m done that it’ll be more than worth it.
This early and unexpected edition of the Funky16Corners Radio thing is evidence of said project, and a small bit of celebration that it is in fact coming to fruition. The first thing I did (after getting the room somewhat organized) was the installation of the home DJ setup (see above). This had been both a long time coming, and extremely satisfying when it was finished.
Following a few days of getting all my sonic ducks in a row (cableing, knob-turning, equalizing and whatnot), I hooked up the digital recorder, grabbed my road cases and pulled out a small stack of 45s and mixed them live, on the spot.
Aside from a certain, unifying feel (funk, soul and funky soul, natch), I didn’t concentrate all that much on pre-selection of the tunes herein. I grabbed something interesting to kick things off, and as that record rotated, I pulled a handful of others out of the box, picked one (or two, or three, depending on how deep a handful fate was dealing me) that I thought might fit, cued it up on the second turntable and repeated the process until a little over forty-five minutes later the needle on the last record hit the run-off groove. Not unlike how I do it when I’m spinning at the Asbury Park 45 Sessions or any other live date. It’s one of those things where you hope you’ve stocked your record box properly, and you let inspirado take you by the hand and lead where it will.
There are a lot of old faves here, as well as a couple of tracks that will return to be blogged on their own in the not too distant future. As has been the policy with ‘live’ mixes, there is no accompanying zip file, but remember that this is not going to be the ongoing F16Radio format. Think of it as a special bonus to stuff into your ears on Monday.
I hope you dig the mix, and I’ll be back later in the week with something groovy.
Peace
Larry
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Le ‘Q’ on the cover of Smackwater Jack
Listen/Download -Quincy Jones – Ironside
Greetings all.
What is being up with you?
The ongoing Funky16Corners Record Vault project took a great leap forward yesterday with the new DJ set-up (improvements to which were financed by my slot machine winnings over vacation*) going on line. The rig was cobbled together using some donated speakers (thanks Cenzo), an old amp/tuner, my existing “good” turntable, and augmented with the new turntable and mixer. I expect that I’ll be spending some time hobbling around the old learning curve, but before long I should be cranking out some more ‘live’ mixes, as well as putting a somewhat sharper edge on my turntable skills.
In other, also important news, I’m getting upgraded to a nicer time-slot over at Viva Internet Radio, so as of next week (April 23) the Funky16Corners Radio Show will be airing at 9PM on Friday nights. This is a very groovy development, and I cab assure that with the addition of the home DJ thingy I’ll be laying down some live mixes, so fall by.
That said, the tune I bring you today is something I definitely plan on dropping in an upcoming set, Quincy Jones’s 1971 reading of the ‘Ironside’ theme.
For those of you too young to remember, ‘Ironside’ was a hit TV show (premiering in 1967) that featured Raymond Burr as a paraplegic, San Francisco police detective who went around solving crimes from the back of a specially engineered van (certainly no more ludicrous than much of what you’ll see spilling from the idiot box these days). The very groovy theme was penned by none other than the mighty Quincy Jones
The version you’re hearing this fine day appeared on Jones’s 1971 LP ‘Smackwater Jack’. I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, but I suspect that like the version of ‘Hikky Burr’ on the same album, this take on the ‘Ironside’ theme was also re-recorded/embellished for that LP.
The whole affair manages to encapsulate a jazzy soundtrack feel, with some funky bass (Chuck Rainey), electric piano (Bob James), flute (Hubert Laws) and soprano sax (Jerome Richardson), taking the original theme and stretching it out for some solos. Jones manages to bring on the heavy brass without drowning out the rhythm section. This version starts out (like the TV theme) with something (synthesizer, I assume) imitating a police siren, with the Fender Rhodes bubbling underneath until the flute comes in to state the theme. There’s some groovy wah-wah guitar running in the background, and until the trumpet solo comes in, the feel is as much jazz rock as it is jazz. Aside from the impressive names listed above, the session was a who’s who of jazz and studio heavies, with Jones sharing producing duties with Phil Ramone and bass legend Ray Brown.
Very solid indeed.
I hope you dig it and I’ll be back on Monday.
Peace
Larry
*Only significant in that as a general rule I don’t gamble (no moral objection, I just like to spend my money on records). If you see me at the track, it’s because I like horsies. I hit the jackpot (as it was) playing the penny slots. That’s right – pennies. 30,000 of them…
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Larry Birdsong
Listen/Download -Larry Birdsong – Fairly Well
Greetings all.
I don’t know about you (since only a some of you reside in the same general geographic sphere as yours truly) but this grey, cold(er) weather is bringing me down. I know I always complain about being beat – like a rented mule – but that’s pretty much part and parcel of having two little kids.
That, and the fact that I got word yesterday that Master Groove is going on hiatus for an unspecified length of time. I was really digging bringing my records into NYC to spin at Forbidden City, and knowing that a semi-regular gig is going off the rails is a first class drag. So FEH to that, and let’s all keep our fingers crossed that whatever screwed the deal gets unscrewed and when it does we can all meet up in the City for some funk 45s, dumplings and cold beer.
That out of the way, what better way to turn the heat up (at least temporarily) than with a tasty bit of southern funk?
Though I knew his name, until I saw the flipside of today’s selection featured over at Queen City Crates, I hadn’t heard the music of Mr. Larry Birdsong.
Based in Nashville, alongside folks like Johnny Jones and the King Casuals and Frank Howard and the Commanders, Birdsong mixed R&B, blues, soul and funk on records that he recorded for labels like Excello, Champion, Cherokee, Sur-Speed and Ref-O-Ree from the mid-50s into the 70s, eventually finding himself in Gospel in the 80s.
Birdsong recorded three 45s for Ref-O-Ree in 1969. Today’s selection, ‘Fairly Well’ appeared as the b-side to the second of those records, ‘Digging Your Potatoes’. While ‘Digging…’ is the wilder, more upbeat side of the record (you can hear it a QCC by clicking the link above) , ‘Fairly Well’ has lots to offer as well.
I really dig the way Birdsong’s gospel-inflected vocals wail over the top of the deep, funky track. The drums are tight, the organ just this side of churchy, and the backing vocals have one foot in the amen corner and the other in the footlights. Things start out on a socially conscious tip before dipping onto the dance floor with namechecks for the Popcorn, the Cissy Strut, the ‘James Brown’, and in a supremely confident move, Larry raps that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet until you’ve seen him do the ‘Larry Birdsong’.
In a soulful hat trick, that’s right, up tight, and (of course) out of sight.
I hope you dig the record, and I’ll be back on Friday with something groovy.
Peace
Larry
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