I hope everyone – at least those of you so effected – is weathering the heat wave in good health.
It has been brutally hot, and occasionally humid as well here in the Northeast…the kind of hot where it takes miles of high speed driving before the air conditioning is able to cool down the inside of the car, which is OK too, since driving with the windows opening is like watching a cake bake from inside the oven.
It’s been a busy week hereabouts, with my beloved – Mrs Corners – heading into the hospital to meet her own health challenge this weekend. It’s getting to the point where we may have to look into bionic replacement parents to care for our children while we spend all of our time with our friends in the medical profession.
It is surely a drag, but since you gotta do, what you gotta do (as they say), we gotta do this, so keep your fingers crossed.
I hope everyone has been digging the latest edition of Funky16Corners Radio, and I thought it would be fitting to close out the week with something else that is both jazzy and funky.
The tune in question is something written by a younger jazz master, interpreted by one of his forefathers in a late career (successful) attempt at relevance, that being a very tasty rendering of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Chameleon’ as performed by the mighty Lionel Hampton.
Mr. Hampton’s funky sides have appeared in this space before and I have previously rhapsodized about how groovy it was that a man who came to prominence caressing the vibes alongside Benny Goodman in the 1930s lit things up again in the 60s and 70s with all things soulful and funky.
On both his own Glad-Hamp imprint, as well as Brunswick Records, Hampton got down with some decidedly contemporary sounds with both small groups and his own big band.
I had previously heard – and dug – a live, big band version of ‘Chameleon’ by Hampton, when I was going through a friend’s sale box and discovered a studio version of the tune on Glad-Hamp. Fortunately for me another friend happened to have his portable turntable there and I was able to give the record a spin, discovering that the studio version was just as tasty – if not tastier – that the one I already had. The dude in question was letting the record go for a very reasonable price, so I grabbed it for my record box and brought it home.
So, I hope you dig it, and remember to tune in to the Funky16Corners Radio Show on Viva internet radio, this Friday night at 9PM EST, with the episode available here for download on Saturday.
Have a great weekend and I’ll be back on Monday.
Stan Kenton & Orchestra – 2002 Zarathustrevisited (Creative World)
Frank Wess – Wessward Ho (Enterprise)
Larry Willis – Out On the Coast (Groove Merchant)
Gary Burton – Vibrafinger (Atlantic)
Gary McFarland – On This Site Shall Be Erected (edit) (Skye)
Jimmy Smith – Hang’Em High (Pride)
Phil Upchurch – Elektrik Head (Cadet)
Pete Jolly – Prairie Road (A&M)
Hampton Hawes – Don’t Pass Me By (Prestige)
Neal Creque – Jasmine (Cobblestone)
Roy Meriwether – Mean Greens (Capitol)
Eddie Jefferson – Psychedelic Sally (Prestige)
I hope the new week finds you well.
I was just sitting here in the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcasting Nerve Center, when I realized that in all the new equipment/live mix/pledge drive hysteria, it had been something like three months since the last ‘regular’ Funky16Corners Radio mix, i.e. one with the drops and the accompanying zip file and the whole – as they used to say in the olden days – ‘shooting match’, and as a result, I felt that I should get my – as they still say today – shit together, dip into the digimatized stock and get something going. So, I did.
Things being what they are, that being busy, both with the real world moves and the blog stuff, the old Funky16Corners mix schedule (as it was) has been stretched out somewhat. This has not however resulted in a lack of content, in fact the net result has been more music, with the Soul Club mixes (expect more of those from myself and guest selectors in the coming months) and the recent addition of archived/MP3 versions of the show I do weekly for Viva internet radio. As a result there’s probably more to listen to here than any sane person could digest, so dig in, slap some of the good stuff on your portable MP3 delivery device and stuff it in your ears (as time allows).
That said, I have whipped up a new mix, and I think you’ll dig it. Funky16Corners Radio v.86 – Elektrik is both jazzy and funky, with lots of the good stuff you’ve come to expect as part of the Funky16Corners Radio experience, with a perfect vibe for a warm summer night.
Things get started with something that surprised even me, that being Stan Kenton’s funky, fusion-y take on Deodato’s reworking of Strauss’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, cleverly titled ‘2002 Zarathustrevisited’ (Oh, Stan….), wherein the often overwrought master of heavily brassed West Coastery lets his sideburns grow in and hands the baton over to the younger cats in the band. Unlike similar sounds emitting from the Woody Herman organization, I have little faith that the man with his name on the bandstand had much to do with this one, and as a result, it is very groovy indeed. Frank Wess works a very cool, vaguely trippy (heavily echoed) and somewhat funky sound with ‘Wessward Ho’. Alongside his most excellent flute work, there’s plenty of vibes, wah wah guitar and clavinet to being up the soulful quotient. If you can get your hands on a copy of the 1970 ‘Wess to Memphis’ album, do so, because unlike so many of his hard bop contemporaries, Wess was able to work very well in a more modern bag.
I’ve featured tracks by pianist Larry Willis in a couple of previous mixes, and for good reason too, since he was a master of a certain extra-hot, era-specific, electric piano sound. The tune ‘Out On the Coast’ take the soul jazz vibe and funks it up without drifting into the land of fusion. It’s serious enough to be jazz, but with enough get down in it to work as funk.
If you’re familiar with some of the more ethereal work of vibist Gary Burton you may find ‘Vibrafinger’ to be a somewhat jarring experience. Here, instead of the soothing chimes of the vibraphone, Burton offers up a heavily treated, electrified and distorted sound, accompanied by some heavy guitar and drums.
‘On This Site Shall Be Erected’ is an edited (by me) version of the first track on Gary McFarland’s concept album ‘America the Beautiful’. Thanks no doubt to the fact that he was co-owner of the label, his work for Skye Records is at times very far out, ranging from his soft and mellow vocalizing alongside his vibes, to heavier orchestral work, which, like this track, sometimes got funky. With guitar by Eric Gale and drums by Bernard Purdie, ‘On This Site Shall Be Erected’ moves from a brief avant garde section, directly into a few short minutes of big band funk.
Though you’re probably familiar with the Booker T and the MGs version of the movie theme ‘Hang’Em High’ (a Top 10 hit in 1968), you’ll probably dig Jimmy Smith’s long-form take on the tune from the ‘Black Smith’ album. You get to hear Jimmy work the Hammond alongside a piano (almost the whole time) and he does a predictably great job.
Next up is something a little spacey from the king of Chicago studio axemen, Mr. Phil Upchurch. ‘Elektrik Head’ from his 1969 LP ‘The Way I Feel’ sees Upchurch getting all up inside the echoplex, managing to be jazzy, soulful and passably psychedelic all at the same time.
Things mellow out a little bit – yet remain funky – with ‘Prairie Road’ by pianist Pete Jolly. A track from the largely improvised and wholly excellent ‘Seasons’ album, it features Jolly on the electric piano, and none other than Paul Humphrey on the drums. If you can score this on vinyl, good for you (it took me a while). If you can’t, grab it in reissue because it really has to be heard in its entirely. GREAT record. Hampton Hawes was featured in the electric piano mix earlier this year. ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ is another fantastic cut from his 1972 ‘Universe’ album. Neal Creque is another great, underrated musician and composer who is better known for his work as a sideman (with Mongo Santamaria among others) than for his solo work (probably because there’s not a lot of it…). ‘Jasmine’ is from his 1972 ‘Contrast’ album, and features some West Indian flavor mixed in with the funky jazz, sounding like a younger, hipper cousin to Sonny Rollins’ ‘St Thomas’. Roy Meriwether recorded a fair amount of major label jazz sides, but it’s his private press stuff that is sweated the hardest by the collectors and beat diggers. His version of Eddie Harris’s ‘Mean Greens’ appeared on his Capitol LP ‘Soul Knight’. He takes the tune at a faster, more aggressive pace than Harris did on his OG.
This edition of the Funky16Corners Radio thang closes out with a very groovy track by the father of vocalese, Mr. Eddie Jefferson. I wish I could say I had a copy of the rare 45 of Jefferson’s version of Horace Silver’s ‘Psychedelic Sally’, but I’ll settle for the LP. Not very psychedelic, but quite funky, this sees Jefferson in a very modern bag.
I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.
Listen/Download – Hamilton Bohannon – South African Man
Greetings all.
The end of the week is here, and it would appear that the summer weather may be returning as well (which is a good thing since the actual summer is only a few days away).
It’s Father’s Day this weekend, so I’m going to spend as much time chilling with my sons (and my lovely wife of course, without whom I would not be a father) and reflecting on how much my life has changed in the last decade (for the better, natch…).
The tune I bring you today is something I picked up a while back and have been exploring – at my leisure – ever since. A couple of other tracks from this album have seen inclusion in Funky16Corners Radio mixes, but I’ve saved the best for last.
If you’re a crate digger, or just a serious fan of funk and soul, you have certainly heard of Hamilton Bohannon.
Bohannon got his start drumming for Stevie Wonder and working at Motown as a percussionist and arranger during the 60s. After he moved on from Motown he signed with the Brunswick Records subsidiary Dakar where he would record several albums through the 70s.
Today’s selection, ‘South African Man’ is a long, funky, mid-tempo jam that didn’t make much of a dent stateside but was a dance floor hit over in the UK in 1975, the first of a half dozen hits he had in that country over the next seven years.
A lot has been said about Bohannon as a pioneer of disco, but his work is a lot closer to the Loft-era sounds discussed here in the past than any of the stereotypical sounds of the disco era.
‘South African Man’ is just about six minutes* of ‘vamp’, with a drum and bass heavy riff, augmented with clavinet and wah-wah guitar. The lyrics of the song – as they are – don’t really say much which is kind of surprising considering a song with this title in the heart of the apartheid era, but ultimately, ‘South African Man’ is less about thought and protest than it is about dance floor grinding in the club. And when I say grinding, I’m not kidding, since ‘South African Man’ lingers dangerously close to a porno-soundtrack vibe, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but yet another reminder that the hypnotic rhythms of the club aren’t just about dancing in the, how do they say, vertical position…
That said, slap this one on, stir yourself up an icy cocktail and enjoy the warm breezes of summer before they become (inevitably) oppressive.
See you on Monday.
Listen/Download – Dobby Dobson – Don’t Make Me Over
Greetings all.
Welcome to the middle of the week.
I’d like to get things started by addressing a comment left in a recent post (about the latest episode of the Funky16Corners Radio Show) that I was somehow ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’.
This pissed me off for a couple of reasons, First and foremost that I’ve tried to maintain Funky16Corners as a positive site, and would hope that those of you that stop by to participate would honor that concept. This doesn’t mean that I expect a constant flow of praise (or any praise at all…). If I get something wrong, or you really don’t dig what I’m doing, you’re more than welcome to say so. I’d just rather you do it in a constructive fashion.
Not knowing the commenter in question, and considering the brevity and brusqueness of his comment, I can’t be sure exactly what it was that he saw as the “bottom of the barrel”, but since the show remarked about was composed entirely of reggae, ska and rock steady, I’ll go ahead and assume that was the nature of the problem.
The Funky16Corners blog has been around for more than five years (and the web site almost five more years before that) and those of you that have been along for a longer section of the ride already know that the sounds posted and written about in this space might at first appear to be very diverse, but like one of those crazy 3-D magic eye pictures, given the proper amount of concentration, a clearer picture will come into focus.
What you will end up seeing in this case is an illustration of my musical sensibility, at least as it applies to the history of black music in the latter part of the 20th century (and occasionally beyond). Over the years Funky16Corners has featured mainstream soul, funk, jazz, Northern Soul, fusion, breaks and beats, island soul (i.e. all parts of the reggae/ska continuum), library music, funky prog, R&B, all styles of music that have captured my interest over more than 30 years of listening and collecting music, and all connected, whether or not the connection is immediately obvious.
I’ll readily admit that my tastes have not always been so broad, and I also understand that many people come to the blog with much more specific interests. I understand that not everyone is going to dig a record like Judy Street’s ‘What’, or the Horace Andy 45 I posted a few weeks ago, but that’s cool since the interwebs are an unspeakably vast place where you will undoubtedly find something else to listen to until our tastes intersect (as they will inevitably do) once again.
Not everyone digs as many kinds of music (or books, or movies, or TV shows) as I do, but as anyone who knows me well will tell you (especially my wife) my brain is kind of crazy like that, and that I have managed to divert part of my ongoing stream of consciousness in one place as well as I have is something of a miracle (which is why I maintain a second blog).
This also has a lot to do with time. I’ll be 48 years old this year, and thanks to growing up in a house where music was treasured I’ve been listening to, collecting and studying music since I was a kid. While there are people out there that might be able to devote almost four decades to a much narrower focus – something that has produced great scholarship on specific genres of music like jazz and the blues – I’ve spent much of that time following my ears wherever they go. There have certainly been periods of extreme concentration, where I got deep into a specific sound to the exclusion of everything else, but since it’s all about the connections, I always come to a fork in the road less traveled and continue on to something new.
While the focus at Funky16Corners has always been fairly clear, there is hardly a style of music that I don’t listen to. Though the largest part of my collecting is reflected in the music written about here and at Iron Leg, someone getting a closer look at the stuff that lines the walls of the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcasting Nerve Center might walk away with more questions asked than answered, but that’s OK too.
The tune I bring you today is another Jamaican 45, by an artist that has been featured here once before (as part of Funky16Corners Radio v.74), Dobby Dobson. I’ve mentioned here in the past that I got into Jamaican music via the UK mod/Two-tone revival of 70s and 80s (though the first ska cover I ever heard was the Hooters version of Don Drummond’s ‘Man In the Street’), and though I’ve come to love later reggae and dub, I always find my way back to ska and rock steady. Though the rhythms were often different, there is no denying that the sounds coming out of Jamaica and the UK in the 60s were anything but another variety of the music we call soul.
Dobby Dobson started recording in the 60s as part of the duo of Chuck and Dobby, and later with groups like the Virtues. He went on to record as a solo artist for a variety of Jamaican labels and producers, eventually working as a producer himself before emigrating to the US.
Dobson’s outstanding cover of the Bacharach/David tune ‘Don’t Make Me Over’ (a 1963 Top 40 hit for Dionne Warwick) is interesting for a couple of reasons. If the organ intro sounds familiar it’s because it’s basically a lift of the melody of the Tornados 1962 worldwide hit ‘Telstar’. How the organist (or producer Rupie Edwards) came to this unusual juxtaposition is a mystery, but ultimately it’s a groove. The song also works really well, lifted from its original off-waltz time arrangement and placed into the chugging rock steady rhythm. Dobson’s vocal may lack the epic scope of Warwick’s original, but that’s cool too since it’s interesting to hear the song delivered from the male perspective.
I haven’t been able to nail down an exact date on this 45 (since it appears to have been released on a few different labels) but it looks to have been recorded in 1969 or 1970.
I hope you dig the tune (and understand where I’m coming from) and I’ll be back later in the week.
Oh, and I assure you, I’m NOWHERE near the bottom of the barrel…
Listen/Download – Ross Carnegie & Co. – Open Up Your Mind
Greetings all.
I hope the new week finds you all well.
I spent Thursday, Friday and the rest of the godforsaken weekend dealing with yet another in a seemingly endless parade of kidney-related roadblocks. Long story short, one of the newer kidney stones (which weren’t supposed to be happening) became dislodged from its home in the “meat” of the kidney (as my doctor likes to call it) and scored itself an eagle, dropping directly into the ureter, which in accordance with Murphy’s Law, was too narrow to afford it egress. As a result, my doctor (always properly cautious) dragged me back into the surgi-center and reinserted a stent, so that my sole, remaining kidney would not fail. How’s that for fun?
This all sounds a lot worse than it is. Aside from being a huge inconvenience (with the added risks of anesthesia), if the greatest minds of the urological/nephrological world could figure out why I’m still getting stones, and cause it to cease, there would be no problem at all.
Until then, I’m trapped in this bizarre loop where I go through another surgical procedure, only to discover another speed bump when I emerge on the other side.
That (and the fact that I had to take my sick three-year-old to the doctor) is why there was no Friday post.
But, all is – if not well – at least back to the status quo, so continue on I will.
The tune I bring you today is something of a slightly later vintage by a great producer of Hammond 45s, Mr. Ross Carnegie.
I first heard/heard of Mr. Carnegie via the legendary ‘Vital Organs’ comp which featured his song ‘Cool Dad’, as well as his visage on the cover.
Some years later, deep into my own Hammond obsession I scored a copy of ‘The Kid’ (as featured in Funky16Corners Radio v.48), also very groovy.
Anyhoo, the tune I bring you today falls somewhat later in Mr. Carnegie’s limited discography, bears no date but the sound in the grooves suggests to me a recording sometime in the early-to-mid 70s.
Ross Carnegie emigrated to New York from Canada as a young man to work as a jazz pianist. He ended up working not only on piano but mastering the Hammond organ as well, eventually leading his own band which featured a young Alphonse Mouzon on drums in the late 60s.
Later on, Carnegie became known (at least locally) as the pianist in the White Plains, NY Nordstroms department store.
Today’s selection, ‘Open Up Your Mind’, credited to Ross Carnegie and Co. , is a funky, semi-blaxplo experience with all manner of keyboards – analog and synthesized – horns, police whistles and chants (no doubt courtesy of the ‘& Co.’ of the title) of ‘Open up your mind’.
While there are elements that would later come to signify disco, this is most decidedly a non-disco affair (though Carnegie would later release the tune ‘F-Minor Disco’ on his El-Con label, using the same exact catalog number as ‘Open Up Your Mind’).
I hope you dig the tune, and, assuming I’m not hit by a bus or falling space junk, I’ll be back mid-week.
Thanks to some unexpected and decidedly unwelcome crap that just crowbarred itself into my life, I spent the time I’d usually be writing, digimatizing et al, behind the wheel of the Funky16Cornersmobile. As a result the regularly scheduled Friday posts – here and over at Iron Leg – will be preempted.
Fortunately, I have to turn in my Viva Radio shows a week in advance, so the Funky16Corners Radio Show will go off this Friday night at 9PM EST as scheduled.
It’s a good one this week – if I say so myself – with a collection of reggae soul that I think you’ll dig.
Make sure you tune in via the interwebs, and if you can’t, either pick up the stream at Viva afterward, or wait until Saturday and I’ll have the episode archived here for download.
I should be back on Monday. Until then….
Peace
Larry
PS If you haven’t done so already,now might be a good time to catch up with the F16C Soul Club and archived F16C Radio Show mixes…
The middle of the week is here, so what better time for a couple of very tasty bits of Northern Soul (with a very interesting backstory)?
As someone who experienced the 80s firsthand, I have to admit that I don’t find nostalgia aimed in that direction all that entertaining, especially since so many of the nostalgic aren’t old enough to have weathered it the first time.
You see, alongside MTV, crazy haircuts and quirky new wave music, there was of course the reality of the Reagan era, during which the American right kicked open the door and let in the wide variety of religious and political pests that 30 years down the line have completely infested this country.
So, you’ll understand if I’m not in my garage slapping together a time machine so that I can take the ride all over again.
This is not to say that the music was all bad, since a lot of it was very good. The best of new wave was in essence high quality reworking of the 60s pop palette.
One of the biggest new wave hits, that has become a major musical symbol of the era, is Soft Cell’s 1981 hit ‘Tainted Love’.
I’ll even cop to digging it the first time around, years before I had any idea that it was a synthesized reworking of a Northern Soul anthem.
In fact, a few years on, during the whole mod/garage explosion of the mid-80s, when I was initially clued in to the fact that the song had originally been recorded by a singer named Gloria Jones, I was still a decade away from even the tiniest inkling about the existence of the Northern Soul movement.
As a result, I didn’t consider Soft Cell’s covering of ‘Tainted Love’ to have any more subtext that Phil Collins’ execrable mangling of the Supremes’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’.
Flash forward twenty-five odd years and yours truly is neck deep in the sounds of the Northern movement, with all manner of storming Wigan faves spilling out of my record boxes. I’m rambling around YouTube looking for videos of Northern Soul dancers (and of you haven’t seen them, you simply must on account of it’s a wild bag that they were/are in) and I happen upon a short documentary that featured lots of the acrobatic terpsichorian delights.
About six minutes into the video a song came on the soundtrack that knocked me on my ass with its propulsive tempo and pop hooks. A little bit of the Googling, and I discover that the record in question was called ‘What’ by a singer named Judy Street.
A little more exploration on the interwebs and I found myself a copy of same, since I wanted to give it a good home and hear it blasting over some of those big club speakers we all love so much.
Once I had my hands on the 45 (a 1977 era reissue, but more on that in a minute) I started digging into my reference books, and back on the web and I discovered something very interesting about ‘What’, that were I a bigger Soft Cell fan, or a resident of the UK, I might have already been aware of, that being that the group had their second UK hit with this very song, which, not at all coincidentally was also a huge Northern Soul anthem.
‘Hmmmmm…’ says I, realizing that I was going to have to dig a little bit further.
Two hits in a row by one of the great synth-pop acts of the 80s, both yanked from the Northern Soul canon was indeed a curious thing.
As it turns out, aside from the odd juxtaposition of styles, it wasn’t that curious at all.
But first, a little musical history. Gloria Jones was still a teenager when she was discovered by songwriter/producer Ed Cobb (who also penned ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’ for Brenda Holloway) in 1964. The following year she recorded Cobb’s ‘Tainted Love’ for the Champion label.
Jones’ version of the song was – when I finally heard it – a real shocker, every bit as propulsive and soulful as the Soft Cell cover was wan, dissipated and blasé. It was immediately obvious how it had become a very popular spin on the dance floors in the North of England.
Jones went on to record a stack of 45s for Uptown and Minit in the 60s, eventually going on a European tour with the cast of ‘Hair’, where she met none other that former ace face converted into post-psychedelic mushroom gobbler Marc Bolan of T-Rex. She and Bolan fell in love and had a son, performing together until his untimely death in 1977, after which Jones returned to the US and recorded both as a solo and as a backing vocalist.
Jones was herself a songwriter, composing a number of songs for Motown artists, co-writing ‘If I Were Your Woman’ for Gladys Knight and the Pips.
There isn’t much information out there about Judy Street. Her original version of ‘What’ was recorded for HB Barnum’s LA-based Strider label in 1966 (I’ve never seen a picture of the original label), and promptly dropped off the face of the earth. Interestingly enough there was another (inferior) recording of ‘What’ by Melinda Marx (daughter of Groucho, seriously) on VeeJay. Come 1977, and Judy Street’s recording is a popular Northern Soul spin, so much so that John Anderson reissued it on his Grapevine label, where it went on to become the label’s biggest selling 45.
It was during this time period that a young lad named Marc Almond was (according to famed DJ Russ Winstanely) a habitue of the storied Wigan Casino, where he first heard, requested and danced to the records you see before you this fine day.
A few years later, he had the good creative sense to cut a small but significant segment of one scene and paste it on top of another, creating two pop hits (one huge, one not so much). Chances are while any number of soulies were poleaxed when they heard Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘What’ on their radios (or saw them on Top of the Pops), the vast majority of the pop audience had little or no inkling of where these songs had come from, or that so many of their countrymen and women had been dancing to the original versions of these songs for years.
I don’t know about you, but I find this kind of cross-pollination to be very interesting, and the kind of thing that the post-modern, post-internet, post-everything else culture has all but erased. Would such a scenario be possible today, where McLuhan’s Global Village has rendered international communication and sharing of obscure facts but a mouse-click away? I doubt it.
Either way, I hope you dig the tunes and I’ll see you all on Friday.
Dr Feelgood & the Interns – Piano Red/Dr Feelgood (left), Roy Lee Johnson (3rd from right)
Listen/Download – Dr Feelgood & the Interns – Mr Moonlight
Greetings all.
Welcome back to the Funky16Corners blog.
I have to start by thanking those of you who contributed to the 2010 Pledge Drive.
While this wasn’t the best year, you’d have to be locked in a subterranean bunker somewhere to know that it REALLY hasn’t been a good year for a lot of people. That fact makes it all the more significant that some of you felt strongly enough about Funky16Corners to dig deep and send something our way.
I’ve never taken advertising on the blog (though it has been considered) for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, I don’t like the way it looks, and second, I don’t like the way it would change the feel of Funky16Corners.
In some ways – especially thanks to the response I’ve gotten over the years at fund-raising time – Funky16Corners has always been a collaborative effort. Those of you that stop by to partake in the discussion – often furthering it with new information and other leads – and those of you (more often than not some of the same people) who chip in during the pledge drive, are what keep the blog (and the blogger) going.
Despite the fact that blogging can often devolve into solipsism, I prefer it when it breaks through to a level where it really is a shared effort, not just with the music itself, but with the feeling of the music and the history behind it.
While I’m sure there are a lot of people who just stop by to click the links and collect the MP3s, there are a lot of folks, readers, collectors, fellow DJs and musicians who take the time to join in the conversation and make the blog something greater than the sum of its parts.
I’d like to take the time to thank all of you, because without you it wouldn’t really be worth the effort.
So, THANK YOU, VERY MUCH!
Consider this yet another new beginning, recharged for another year in the blog-o-mos-phere.
If you look up at the header, you’ll notice a couple of changes.
First, as promised the Funky16Corners Soul Club is up and running, with all the mixes that were up last week (and if you haven’t checked them all out, take the time to do so because they’re all excellent).
Second, following a number of requests, I’ve mixed down and archived the last several editions of the Funky16Corners Radio Show that I do for Viva internet radio. The shows date back to the end of April when I started doing the live mixes and the show moved to its Friday 9PM (EST) time slot. There are no playlists (I back announce every song) but there are short descriptions about what you can expect in each episode.
If you haven’t yet checked out the radio show, take the time to pull down a couple of episodes and check it out. I think you’ll like it.
Also, make sure you stop by Fleamarket Funk over the next few weeks. The Asbury Park 45 Sessions crew managed to record all the sets from the 5/28 session, and DJ Prestige will be posting them up over the coming weeks.
The tune I bring you today is an old fave that I only got my hands on (in 45 form) last year.
Something you might have picked up on over the years is that I am a regular hound when it comes to the original versions of songs covered and made famous during the 60s by (mainly) white singers, mostly associated with the British Invasion. This is mainly due to the fact that I came to much of the soul music I love via these covers when I was but a lad.
Today’s selection, ‘Mr Moonlight’ by Dr Feelgood and the Interns was covered by the biggest of them all, namely the Beatles (on the US LP “Beatles 65′).
Though my youthful Beatle-mania introduced me to the Fabs version when I was about 13, it wasn’t until decades later that I heard the OG. When I did I was blown away, especially when I began to dig a little.
As it turns out, ‘Mr Moonlight’ was penned (and sung) by Mr. Roy Lee Johnson, the performer of one of my all time fave 45s, 1966s ‘Boogaloo #3’. That, and the fact that ‘Dr Feelgood’ was a pseudonym for blues legend Piano Red (aka William Lee Perryman) who was 51 when this record was recorded. Perryman, who was playing and recording with Blind Willie McTell in the mid-1930s, spent years as both a musician and under the Dr Feelgood name, as a DJ in the Atlanta area.
It is in fact Perryman singing on the 45s A-side ‘Dr Feelgood’ which was a minor R&B hit.
It was the B-side, ‘Mr Moonlight’ which would – a few years later – put more than a few dollars in the pockets of Roy Lee Johnson.
One of those records that presents a perfect bridge between the harmony records of the 1950s and the soul of the 60s, ‘Mr Moonlight’ has a melody worthy of a Tin Pan Alley standard, and Johnson’s vocal is nothing less than epic.
This is one of those songs that I can’t help wailing along with when I play it in the car (or anywhere else I think I won’t get caught).
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with something cool.
Greetings all, and welcome to the 2010 Funky16Corners Pledge Drive, beer blast and chili cook-off (well…just the first one, really, but I wouldn’t mind some cold beer and hot chili alongside the funk and soul 45s).
This is the fifth year I’ve come to you with my hand outstretched, asking that those of you that are so inclined, and of course can afford to, donate some small sum to contribute to the upkeep of the Funky16Corners empire (as it is).
To go into the WABAC machine for a moment, this all started four years ago, when Funky16Corners was the only blog I did, and was operated at very little cost, employing the same cheapo file storage and bandwidth that I used for the Funky16Corners web zine.
Then, out of the blue the good people at BoingBoing, a VERY heavily traveled site, linked to one of my posts, and in a single day Funky16Corners got enough traffic to erase a months worth of bandwidth, just about shutting things down.
It was at that point that I checked in with some of my more, how do they say ‘web savvy’ friends, who informed me that I should probably take the opportunity to move the whole shebang to a paid server space where storage and bandwidth spikes would not present such an issue.
So, I signed up and moved on to bigger and better things.
As a result, I started the yearly Pledge Drive in an attempt to offset the cost of the server.
In the years that followed, the Funky16Corners Radio Podcast (and the ensuing archive, the most heavily attended section of the site) got started, the blog moved from Blogger to WordPress, and then this year, following some menacing behavior by the otherwise wonderful folks at the free WordPress service, I crated up the whole mess and made the move to run the WordPress software (a related but separate entity from the blog host) our of my own server space. While doing that, I redesigned the blog, opened the Guest Mix Archive and watched my stats drop and subsequently rebound as the rest of the world adjusted their links accordingly. Of course, the fact that I only just discovered that I neglected to set up the post archives properly, means that they’ve been offline from when the blog moved in January until yesterday. That didn’t help.
As in previous Pledge Drives, I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion. This year’s shindig evolved out of a recent change, in the blog, and the real world as well.
The last year has seen two important acquisitions in the Funky16Corners equipment arsenal. First and foremost, last Christmas my wife got me a portable digital recorder. Second – thanks to an unexpected windfall from a rare trip to the slot machines – I finally picked up a second turntable and a mixer, completing my home DJ set-up.
What this new equipment allowed me to do was (among other things) to record, and present to you, ‘live’ DJ mixes. The first of these appeared at Funky16Corners via sets recorded live at Master Groove in New York City. Later on, after the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcast Lab was up and running, I started to record mixes from my own turntables.
It was after I posted one of these, with the caveat that mixes recorded live would not have accompanying zip files of individually recorded tracks (for obvious, labor intensive reasons), that a reader (thanks Michael!) suggested that these mixes have their own section of the blog, and their own numbering sequence.
I had been thinking of something similar, and decided to take this idea a step further.
Though I have done a fair number of guest mixes for other blogs/sites, I have never (aside from a collaboration with my man DJ Prestige) ever hosted guest mixes by other DJs here at Funky16Corners.
Taking a page from the ‘two birds with one stone’ book, I decided that this year’s Pledge Drive would be a great time for the opening of what I’m calling the Funky16Corners Soul Club.
The Soul Club will be a repository for live mixes (whether recorded in the club, or on the decks at home), both by yours truly, and by DJs whoes work and sensibility I respect.
The Funky16Corners Soul Club will be opening with a virtual ‘Allnighter’, that being a collection of eight separate mixes (two by me to open and close the festivities, six by others). Once you pull down the ones and zeros you’ll be able to simulate, in the home setting, free of sweat (other people’s anyway), spilled beer (same there) and the like, a full evening (and then some) of high quality, professionally mixed funk and soul music.
When I decided to put this together, I put out some feelers to some of my favorite DJs, including the core of the Asbury Park 45 Sessions Crew, Brian Poust aka Agent45, and DJ Tarik Thornton and asked them to contribute mixes for the grand opening of Soul Club.
If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you’ve definitely heard about DJs Prestige, Prime Mundo, Bluewater and M-Fasis. I’ve been spinning with the Asbury Park 45 sessions crew for almost three years now, and during that time have developed a huge amount of respect for my fellow resident selectors.
Though I’ve DJ’d with a lot of people, my time with the AP45 crew has been a serious learning experience. These DJs have not only skills, and deep crates, but above all it’s their extraordinary taste that makes them great. I’ve written about it in this space before, but I have to reiterate how often an AP45 Sessions turns into a learning experience with one (or often more) DJ running up to the decks to see what another selector is spinning. There are many hot 45s in my DJ box that can be traced directly back to the AP45 Sessions, whether from one of the residents, or from one of the many distinguished guests that have graced us with their presence over the years.
DJ Prime Mundo may very well have the deepest crates of any working chef (including well known digger Julia Child). He applies the same levels of care and imagination to his DJ sets as he does to his food. Prime Mundo is – like every DJ represented here – a tireless digger with exceptional taste.
DJ Bluewater, in addition to being a longtime resident selector on the AP45 crew is the founder of Master Groove in NYC and a well regarded drum’n’bass DJ. He is a self described ‘funk 45 nerd’ and a connoisseur of heavy, heavy breakbeats.
M-Fasis, DJ and producer is the master of digging up and uncovering the heaviest records you’ve never heard of (or never expected). A resident at both the Asbury Park 45 Sessions and Master Groove, he also makes beats and produces.
Brian Poust, aka Agent45 is, in addition to running the most excellent Georgia Soul web site and blog, is one of the most respected soul DJs working today. Based out of Georgia, but traveling far and wide to spin funk, soul and gospel, Brian always brings the heat.
DJ Tarik Thornton is a native of New Orleans who has DJ’d (in clubs and on the radio) all over the country. He has a generosity of spirit, and like all the other DJs here, excellent taste in music. He started in college radio at WTUL in New Orleans, before relocating to New York City, and eventually Milwaukee, WI where he met up and started working with the crew at Burn Hearts. He has since spun with DJ Finewine (WFMU), Justin Salinas and the Hot Pants crew as well as the Hipshaker DJs in Minneapolis.
I don’t expect many of you to listen to these mixes end to end (though considering the amount of heat therein, you could do much worse with the next seven plus hours of your life) but the interwebs and MP3s being what they are, you can pull them down, file them however you like and soak up the good stuff at your leisure.
Once again, if you dig what I do here at Funky16Corners (and over at Iron Leg as well), and the current economy hasn’t left you destitute, please take the time to click on the Paypal link and toss a couple of shekels into the hat to help keep things going. It would be greatly appreciated, and since I’m going to keep working on this blog as long as time (and money) allow, it’ll keep the long list (close to 100) of mixes up and growing.
Over the last ten years, with the web zine, the blogs and getting to spin records in a variety of settings, the whole Funky16Corners ‘thing’ has become a big part of my life. The reason for this (aside from obvious matters of time spent) has a lot to do with the interaction these efforts bring me with many cool people, including the collectors and DJs, but also with the folks who just plain love the music and take the time to come out to the gigs or stop by the blog to add to the conversation, or just to say ‘Hi!’.
I’ve made many new friends, been turned on to lots of new music and most importantly found a productive outlet for my passion.
So, dig in, enjoy the music (click on the pledge links) and I’ll see you all next week.
Listen/Download – The Mad Hatters – The Monkey Children
Greetings all.
The end of the week is here, and as usual, I am just about tapped out.
Things have been busy hereabouts, with all the bloggish stuff, and all of the real world stuff that keeps the old datebook stuffed full of commitments.
Next week will see the arrival of the 2010 Funky16Corners Pledge Drive, and as I’ve mentioned a few times in the last week I have something very cool lined up for he occasion (the main thing that’s been keeping me busy).
Also, this Friday sees the long awaited return of the Asbury Park 45 Sessions at the World Famous Asbury Lanes. The whole crew will be there, and will without a doubt be packing some serious heat of the funk and soul variety, so, if that sounds like a bag that you’d like to be in, and you’re withing driving distance it would be a very groovy thing if you were to fall by and check out the doings.
The tune I bring you today is something I picked up off of a sale list a while back, mainly because it looked very cool. I’d never heard of the group – The Mad Hatters – but one look at the combo in the picture above, and a glance at the song titles on the album convinced me that it was more than worth my while to unfold a couple of dollars and grab the disc.
I’ve gone on at length in this space (and elsewhere) about my love for, and definition of soul jazz. I am without question a huge fan of the genre, as well as a connoisseur thereof, in that I’ve spent way too much time putting what might be described as ‘too fine a point’ on what I consider true ‘soul jazz’.
There are those that will lump pretty much everything with an organ on it into the genre, or similarly anything with the slightest leaning toward rhythm and blues. Much of the music so defined is – at least nominally – soul jazz, but this says more about the omnipresence of the sound between the late 50s and the late 60s, than it does about the people making those sounds.
If there’s a point I’m trying to make, it is that while many people were including soul jazz as part of their own musical bouillabaisse, there were others who devoted themselves to, and specializing in this particular sound. The music of the Mad Hatters would suggest that the group fell into that latter category.
I haven’t been able to discover anything about the group. My instincts (and the jacket photo on the record) suggest to me that the Mad Hatters were a working outfit, as opposed to some anonymous grouping of studio heads.
The music on the album, represented here by the track ‘The Monkey Children’ is pure soul jazz, bluesy and swinging, never overplayed or taken too close to the edge, ultimately the kind of music with which to nod your head (and tap your feet) between sips of a cold beer or the cocktail of your choice.
Groovy stuff, and the kind of thing I can still listen to for hours on end.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday with the Pledge Drive extravaganza.
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.
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