Soul Continentals – Bowlegs
Good evening! If you are visiting us from our new webpage at http://gazfunk.com then you may notice that things look a little different around here. After a few months of frustration with wordpress.com, I have finally moved across to my own self-hosted site which enables a lot more functionality and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to post the sound file of each track instead of having to link to a youtube video.
If however you’re wondering what I’m talking about as things look exactly the same to you, that’s because you are viewing today’s update through the old wordpress site – http://www.gazfunk.wordpress.com. At this point I would ask that you update your link to the new site and/or subscribe via the email subscription link on the front page so that you are automatically notified of any new posts if updating bookmarks etc isn’t your thing. In the meantime I will continue to provide the content across both sites for a number of weeks so that you don’t miss out if you haven’t transferred over with us. The links to the blog have been updated along the various social media platforms, so if you are visiting us from there you don’t need to do anything. Be advised though – in a few weeks the wordpress site will no longer be updated so it’s important that you make note of the new site as soon as possible – http://www.gazfunk.com as we wouldn’t want you to miss out on our great music!
With all that in mind it’s on to today’s chosen piece of wax. This is one that I’ve had in my collection for quite a while and I have to say is one of my favourite 45s that I own. It has exactly what I look for in a funk track – great intro, uptempo, pounding drums and my old favourite – the funky organ. Whilst not being especially valuable this record isn’t something I’ve ever heard played out, or indeed referenced by anyone else, though maybe that might change after this feature!
This is one of only 2 releases that this obscure outfit put out – the other entitled “Ooh I Love You” released a year before this one in ’67. Much like this record, the funkier side is the flip, something that has become a bit of a theme here on Gazfunk. Always check the b-side folks! Anyway, I hope you dig this one as much as I do.
The Party Brothers – Do The Ground Hog
Howdy! Hope you are all feeling good this midweek. Before I bring you today’s carefully chosen selection I just want to tip you off that things will start to look a bit different around here in the coming weeks. I’ve decided to move away from the wordpress.com platform and have my own site at www.gazfunk.com – however things aren’t set up yet so hold fire on visiting the new site until I’ve confirmed that it’s live. There will be a lot more content on the new site and a different layout and fresh design – don’t worry though, I’ll still be bringing you the finest soul and funk ever committed to wax every single week!
I’m also working with some more friends to bring you more guest contributors – a feature that I hope will become more frequent than in previous times. So stay tuned for what will be an exciting future! As for now though it’s back to this week’s featured song..
The track I bring you today was released in 1968 on the “Revue” label and comes courtesy of an obscure outfit called “The Party Brothers”. There’s not a lot that I know about the group other than the fact that they backed Jamo Thomas on a number of releases and cut 2 records on their own right – this one and a track entitled “Let Me Be The One” which I also have, but purchased for the b-side “A&T’s Party”. This particular release always puts me in mind of Billy Preston’s monster mod tune “Billy’s Bag” with a very similar tempo, not to mention those bongos. There’s not much higher recommendation than that…
Benjamin & The Right Direction -Light Of My Life
It’s not very often that I get to bring you some latin soul from my collection, much less so something new but that’s exactly what I have for you today. Released in September last year on the obscure Palmetto St Recording Co and distributed via Daptone Records, Light Of My Life evokes memories of that late 6os/early 70s Nu-Yorica sound that was sweeping through The Big Apple.
I first heard it a couple of weeks after it’s release upon a visit to a record store in San Antonio during my U.S. Tour (the excellent Friends Of Sound) where two of my buddies worked. After digging for a few hours one of the guys asked the other had he played this 45 for me. Upon releasing he hadn’t, he dropped the needle on the record and within the opening few seconds I knew that I had to have a copy. For the sum of around $7, I was able to grab one and leave the store a happy boy with this and a few other purchases.
During my tour this 45 proved to be tremendously popular – pretty much every gig in Texas that I played, one of my fellow djs would spin this track to a great reaction from the crowd, but that also meant I never got to play it out! Ah well – maybe some time!
Fast forward to 2017 and this record is very much in demand after selling out almost immediately. If you slept in at the time you’ll have to part with £65+ for one which is remarkable for a track that is only about 4 months old. I hope you dig it!
Wilson Pickett – Engine Number 9
A lot of the time I bring you a record it’s because it fits a theme at that particular moment in time or (as is becoming more common these days) as a tribute to an artist who had recently passed away. Today’s selection fits neither category – it’s just a damn good song courtesy of a legendary soul star.
I’d probably be insulting you somewhat to go into a whole biography of the “Wicked Pickett” such is his popularity, so I’ll give it a miss. What I will say is this particular 45 is arguably one of the funkiest tracks he ever cut. Released in 1970, this song featured on the album “Wilson Pickett In Philadelphia” and perhaps unsurprisingly was produced by the legendary Gamble & Huff partnership, so you know full well it’s gonna have a groove!!
Lee Fields & The Expressions – Make The World
Happy New Year to you all. I hope 2017 finds you in good health. I’m personally glad to see the back of 2016 as there were quite a number of negative events during the year for me personally. Hopefully this year is a bit more settled.
Whilst I’m not really someone who dwells on the previous year, I’d like to bring you a record from last year that was to my ears, one of the best releases of 2016, courtesy of the mighty Lee Fields.
I’m sure many of you are aware of the history of Lee Fields – from his early releases in the 70s and his return to prominence in the early 2000s as a member of the Daptone family. This release came out on Big Crown records, a label I had never heard of before but they really deliver the goods on this funk banger! I’ve decided to feature the instrumental b side as it’s just a little bit heavier and funkier, but the a-side still kicks ass! Hope you dig this one!
Alphonse Mouzon – Funky Snakefoot
I hope you all enjoyed the holidays (maybe you still are) and have suitably recovered from any over indulgence.
As has been the trend this year, the last few days has seen the passing of a number of well known figures in the music and entertainment world. One that may have passed under the radar however, is the subject of today’s update – Alphonse Mouzon.
Alphonse was a highly respected stick man who performed alongside such luminaries as Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton and Chubby Checker among others.
As well as featuring alongside the aforementioned artists, he also released a number of albums on the iconic Blue Note label including 1974’s Funky Snakefoot from which todays 45 was taken. The hip-hop fans among you may recognise the sample used in a number of Beastie Boys tracks and more obscurely by the British rapper MC Duke.
Condolences to the friends & family of one of the funky drummers.
Gary Walker – Santa’s Got A Brand New Bag
You’ve probably noticed that I’m a little later with the update this week, unfortunately that’s due to the fact that my home was burgled over the weekend and I’ve had a lot of things to sort out over the last few days.
As well as the stress of the burglary the fact that I had my laptop stolen (among other things), has made bringing you this week’s track particularly challenging since I’m creating this update via my mobile phone.
So given that, this one will be a bit shorter than normal. It’ll hardly be a surprise (given the title) that this one is pretty much just a cover of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” with the lyrics slightly changed. No bad thing of course…
Happy bloody Christmas!
Sunday Social – Soul Break
The record that I feature for you today is a track that you can listen to on my GazfunkBlog Youtube channel (the only resource to hear it on the net). Since it’s such a great record and I know that some of you don’t really bother with youtube that much (now that I have to post youtube links due to wordpress’ ridiculous changes), I thought I may as well give my own channel a little bit of promo!
This one exists in the library marked extremely rare and took me a rather long time to track down. I actually took this with me during my recent U.S. Tour but it didn’t get an airing as I thought it just too heavy and fast for the dancefloor (imagine that!!). If you like your funk with heavy organ and driving guitar played at 100mph, then this is the record for you. Just don’t break anything while trying to dance in time to it!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsV5yQuAxag
Ernest Van Treose & The McDaniel, Mary Street Band – Popcorn Push Push
Before I start talking about this week’s selection, I’d like to just take a moment to thank Pete Isaac for his excellent guest contribution last week – it was certainly one of our most popular to date. If you missed out, just go to the archives and you’ll be able to listen again. As I mentioned last week, I hope to bring more groovy selections from the crates of our friends on a more regular basis, so watch out for that!
So on to today’s post and a song that may well win the award for the longest title we have ever featured here on Gazfunk! This one comes by way of Ernest Van Treose – an organ player of some renown who guested alongside such luminaries as BB King & Ray Charles. This particular track features none other than the sadly departed legend that is The Mighty Hannibal – so you known darn well it’s gonna deliver on the funkiness!!
Some of you may have noticed that the posts have changed in recent times – previously I used to upload the song clip from the record so you could just click the little play button. Unfortunately, WordPress decided to charge extra to upload song files right in the middle of my annual subscription, so I was left with no choice but to add the youtube clip of the song instead. As you probably know, this blog is a not-for-profit labour of love and costs me time and money to put together and I don’t recoup any money through advertising on the site, so I’m sure you can all understand why I was reluctant to pay this extra charge. Anyway, you can still enjoy the excellent music I have on offer with the added potential of a nice video/graphics to go along with it! Enjoy this week’s post and I’ll catch up with y’all next week.
Guest Contributor – Pete Isaac
As you know, periodically we here at Gazfunk like to take a little break every once in a while and hand over the blog to one of our friends to write a guest post for us. Over the years we’ve had many djs, bloggers and vinyl enthusiasts give us a little insight into the type of tunes that gets their juices flowing. This year it’s been a little thin on the ground and not as regular a feature as I would have liked, however starting this week I hope to bring you more frequent guest contributions.
So then, on to today’s pop-picker and we’ve got a very special guest digging into their crates for us – Mr Pete Isaac. As some of you are aware, Pete is one half of 45 Live http://www.45live.net/?feed (the other half being Scott Hendy aka Boca 45) which is a collective of some of the UK & Ireland’s top 45 collectors/djs as well as a blog, record label and events organiser.
Pete’s own musical journey started out in 1993 with the launch of Jelly Jazz www.jellyjazz.com – a seminal club night based in Plymouth. The club’s success enabled them to attract guest djs like Gilles Peterson, Mr Scruff, Norman Jay, Quantic, Andy Smith and a whole cast of some of the most respected djs in the U.K. As well as the guest djs, Jelly Jazz also regularly featured many live acts who went on to forge successful careers for themselves some of whom played their first ever U.K. shows at the club.
Well then, I think it’s about time I passed over the baton to Pete. Over to you mate…
The Perfect Circle ‘The Hands Of Time’ (Inner City)
Gaz kindly asked me to write a piece about a record in the collection recently, which I did, but I had replicated one that had already been done before, should have checked I guess! The focus of that story was about the journey a piece of music can take you on, how far that might be and of the connections and impact that a humble record can make. It was ‘Acid Jazz Vol. 1’ on BGP by the way.
So take 2, and I’ll keep to the sentiment of the other piece and focus on the way music unites. Way back in my early days as a promoter/DJ in ’94, I used to call up Soul Jazz Records in London every Tuesday morning to buy as many records as I could to drop the following night at Jelly Jazz in Plymouth. On the other end of the phone a young chap called Chris Goss who quickly became my go-to guy to ask for, he got me sussed quickly and was able to play breaks and grooves down the phone that I would invariably buy. He must have sold me thousands of pounds worth of records over those first few months! Naturally I would tell him stories of our midweek club night deep into the SW, and a DJ booking for Chris soon followed. I wasn’t that far out of art college at this time so was living in somewhat modest conditions, i.e. a tiny room in a shared house with loads of muso’s and hippies, and Chris got to stay on some cushions in a rough-as-you-like basement lounge. But anyway, we didn’t care about such conditions, youth was still on our side!
Typically, the club that night was rammed to the rafters with a bonkers mad-for-it collections of hippies, ravers, musicians and students. We enjoyed that rare commodity of an audience that just lapped up everything and anything you threw at them. This was obviously years before the internet so obscure American funk etc etc etc was just not so easily accessible, so those calls to Soul Jazz each week were invaluable. But the best way to discover music was of course to hear it in a club, so when Chris and a few others like Bunny from Acid Jazz came down with bags of records we’d never seen, Wednesday nights were always punctuated with mindblowing moments. One of the comments we most heard from punters at the time was something along the lines of “damn, what is this music? Where the hell do you get it?”, I pretty much said the same myself to those early guest DJs we had! Chris dropped a killer set that night with hip hop, jazz, jazz-rock etc, but when he dropped ‘The Hands Of Time’, it was one of THOSE moments. Both myself and fellow Jelly resident DJ Griff flew up to the decks to find out what it was before rejoining the packed dancefloor to literally go nuts. What a monster of a track, fusing the best of jazz, funk and disco into a relentless groove punctuated with stuttering breaks and spaced out instrumentation, a phenomenal track from a killer LP. (Sometimes, don’t you wish you could hear something for the first time again?) Of course I had to obtain the record and eventually procured an original copy, signed by the main man George Semper too for added niceness!
Chris pretty much cemented himself as a regular with that drop and set and fast became our favourite guest DJ and played almost every month for years and years, as well as becoming great family friends. Any old school Jelly Jazz fans will well know the regular ‘Goose Fever’ sessions, where Chris would play all night for a few weeks if I was away from town. These days he has of course gone on to run the world’s biggest D&B label, Hospital Records, but for me, he’ll always be the guy that dropped ‘The Hands of Time’! That and our Tuesday morning record purchasing created a lot more than the sum of their parts, a connection through music that became a fantastic friendship and shared passion for records, especially for things like The Perfect Circle, Brian Auger and the like, we both appreciate a damn good red wine too!
I love the way any record will have it’s immediate story, but you can always consider it’s influence further and be surprised at what direction it ultimately leads you in. Chris and I get to DJ together on the odd rare occasion these days, so next time, through these hands of time, I’ll urge him to drop it again, it will be a perfect circle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0gWfTT0Su8
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