{"id":6637,"date":"2016-09-18T10:26:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-18T15:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/?p=6637"},"modified":"2016-09-18T10:26:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T15:26:22","slug":"tommy-wills-funky-sax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/?p=6637","title":{"rendered":"Tommy Wills – Funky Sax"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Example\"
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tommy Wills (seriously…)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Example\"
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Listen\/Download – Tommy Wills – Funky Sax MP3<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Greetings all.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I was pulling selections from the to-be-blogged folder, I grabbed the 45 you see before you today.<\/p>\n

If you dig anywhere east of the Mississippi (maybe west, too) Tommy Wills<\/strong> 45s are a pretty common sight. On variations of the familiar, blue Airtown and Juke labels (and several others, too) Wills cuts like the sought after \u2018KC Drive\u2019 and \u2018(Funky) 4 Corners\u2019 are always nice to find.<\/p>\n

That said, though I\u2019ve included Wills cuts in mixes, before I sat down to research this record I knew nothing about him.<\/p>\n

My assumption had always been that he was in all likelihood a journeyman R&B\/soul musician, and also (probably) black.<\/p>\n

Well, as Felix Unger<\/strong> was wont to say, \u201cWhen you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME\u201d<\/strong> (right on, Felix<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Turns out not only was Tommy Wills a white guy, but he was a fairly straight-looking middle aged white guy who was well into his 40s when he made these records.<\/p>\n

The odd thing is, that for a guy who put out as much music as he did, and was still active as late as 2009, touring with a big band, there\u2019s not a lot of info out there.<\/p>\n

Wills apparently ran the Airtown\/Juke labels (according to a 1970 issue of Billboard) based alternately out of Dayton, OH (thus the Airtown designation) and Indiana, putting out his own 45s (mostly on Airtown), and (on Juke) records by Dumpy Piano Rice<\/strong> and a variety of R&B, country and polka performers. The labels appear to have been set up to provide jukebox filler, thus the high frequency of covers and the wide variety of styles.<\/p>\n

The Wills 45s I have are all pretty cool, and today\u2019s selection, \u2018Funky Sax\u2019 is no exception.<\/p>\n

Released in 1968, \u2018Funky Sax\u2019 has a Junior Walker<\/strong> flavor, with a soulful backing and some wailing sax by Wills. There\u2019s also a very tasty organ solo (I have no idea who\u2019s playing) and the overall effect is very groovy. I mean, since he was feeding jukeboxes, he called the tune ‘Funky Sax’, filled it with funky sax, so that when someone walked up to the Wurlitzer and dropped in their nickel, what they got was….get ready…funky sax.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure if Wills is still around (he\u2019d be 92 if he is), but as I said, most of his 45s are pretty easy pulls.<\/p>\n

I hope you dig the tune, and I\u2019ll see you on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Keep the faith<\/strong><\/p>\n

Larry<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Example\"<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong> \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

____________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Also, the brand new Funky16Corners ‘Keep Calm and Stay Funky’ stickers have arrived!<\/strong> The stickers are 4″ x 3″ and printed on high quality, glossy stock.<\/strong> They are $2.00 each, with free shipping in the US ($2.00 per order shipping outside of the US).<\/strong> Click here to go to the ordering page.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

PS Head over to Iron Leg too.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tommy Wills (seriously…) Listen\/Download – Tommy Wills – Funky Sax MP3 Greetings all. As I was pulling selections from the to-be-blogged folder, I grabbed the 45 you see before you today. If you dig anywhere east of the Mississippi (maybe west, too) Tommy Wills 45s are a pretty common sight. On variations of the familiar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,17,14,66,12,18],"tags":[163,166,164],"class_list":["post-6637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funk","category-funk-45","category-funky16corners","category-instrumental","category-soul","category-soul-45","tag-funk","tag-funky16corners","tag-soul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMKgo-1J3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6637"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6665,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6637\/revisions\/6665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}