DJ's Old-Time Granny and Dyn-O-Mite spin old school soul, funk, and disco jams! The show airs on special occasions on WCOM radio, 103.5 FM in Carrboro, NC, and streams online worldwide. www.resoul.org
Imagine the biggest party in any city of your choosing, with an A-list guest list of power brokers, ballers, and celebs, including Bill Clinton, Quincy Jones, Maya Angelou, Robert Evans, Beyonce, Jack Nicholson, Kerry Washington, and Amiri Baraka. You’re DJ'ing, and need to start the party off right. So what's your first track?
I would drop Rock With You, by Michael Jackson, because it's guaranteed to get everyone into a smooth, mellow mood. And it was produced by Q., so it would pay him proper respect as one of the party's most honored guests.
Gotta give Sam tha Boogie Man credit for this discovery, because he popped up with a new t-shirt that said, "Keep It Tight." When I fed that into the YouTube matrix, Devin The Dude materialized with a killer underground hip hop/R&B cut flavored with a chopped and screwed sound straight outta Houston. Late of Rap-A-Lot Records, representing the Coughee Brothaz, a head who smoked weed for the first time at a roller rink in the seventh grade. And Devin liked it.
But there's no great video for Keep It Tight, although it's definitely a tight track. So another joint-worthy entry was unearthed, What I Be On, from Devin's sixth LP, Suite 420. Released on April 20, 2010.
Apparently, Devin has yet to blow up all the way live, although four of his last five albums since 2004 have edged into Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop top ten. That may change when his next studio album (One For The Road) drops next month, on 10/8/13.
Oneness of JuJu recorded their seminal soul/funk/jazz LP Space Jungle Luv on America's bicentennial - July 4th, 1976. (Editor's note: Whether coincidence or cosmic convergence, this is the 76th post to appear on Soul'ed Out, UnLtd. Thazz funky, baby!)
Here's that album's semi-title cut, a spaced out jazz-funk masterpiece:
Led by J. Plunky Branch on sax, Oneness of JuJu's 1982 track Every Way But Loose (the Larry Levan mix) turned a new generation of funksters onto the JuJu when it was featured on the Paradise FM playlist in GTA: Vice City Stories.
Checking out a comic book store that also sells records recently, I found a bunch of choice cuts and other goodies. Including a sealed 8-track copy of the soundtrack to Patty, an infamous 1976 porno based on the SLA's kidnapping of Patty Hearst. Not to be confused with Patty-ploitation movies of the same time period like Abduction (1975) or The Ordeal of Patty Hearst (1979). Patty starred Jamie Gillis and was released in hard-X, soft-X and R-rated versions.
Researching this flick, I discovered The Rimshots, who contributed standout numbers to the soundtrack like Takin' It and Revelation.
That led me to their 1976 LP Down To Earth, released on Stang Records, featuring today's most outstanding joint, Super Disco.
Stang Records was a subsidiary of Sylvia Robinson's All Platinum Records, and The Rimshots were the label's house band. Along with King Curtis, they recorded the original Soul Train theme song.
While rocking the tables at a 4th of July cookout held at Captain Ron's infamous spot known as 420+1, I ran into a dude who remembered me from his days as a substitute teacher way back when. Since then, this particular guy has worked at the post office for many years, and knows everybody in town's business.
But that has nothing to do with today's joint. I only brought along 45's, and was using a portable Numark turntable that kept needing pitch adjustments. I'll never use that thing again, the sound was truly horrible. Still, I did my best to keep the funk fresh.
Of all the choice tracks that got laid down, from Time Warp by Eddy Grant to the Doors' Wild Child (since it was the 42nd anniversary of Jim Morrison's death in Paris, likely from a heroin overdose, according to biographer Danny Sugerman, who claims that Jim's girlfriend Pamela Courson confessed to him what really happened that night), the absolute funkiest was Struttin', by Billy Preston. Here he was on Soul Train back in the day, doin' his thing:
As Don Cornelius pointed out, Struttin' wasn't released (on Billy's record The Kids and Me) until May of '74, although the LP had been recorded the previous October. The record featured Joe Walsh on guitar, but there was no sign of him at the Soul Train taping.
Just after midnight, I stumbled onto this track, and it was the perfect middle-of-the-night anthem. From Soiree's 1979 self-titled album, today's joint is an uplifting cover of You Are The Sunshine Of My Life.
Soiree were a disco studio group with vocals provided by Ron Richardson and other top session vocalists including the Luther Vandross Singers. This album gave a disco spin to 70s soul and pop standards.
Tonite's joint is (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher, by Mr. Excitement himself, Jackie Wilson. He was backed by the Funk Brothers on this track, were were moonlighting from Motown at the time. Released in August, 1967, the track hit #1 R&B and #6 on the US pop charts. That same year, the track didn't chart in the UK, but a 1969 re-release hit #11, and was subsequently re-released twice more in the UK, charting both times, in 1975 (#25) and 1987 (#15). Higher and Higher is ranked #246 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Stumbled onto this video today and loved it. Didn't realize Jackie Wilson was so influential. He recorded over 50 hit singles before collapsing onstage from a heart attack at the age of 40 while singing "Lonely Teardrops" at a rock'n'roll revival concert organized by Dick Clark (and then lapsed into a nine-year coma). Inducted into the Rock'N'Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the second year inductees were admitted. #69 on Rolling Stone's list of the top 100 performers of all time. And apparently, ripped off big time by executives of Brunswick Records, the label he recorded for. Wilson died broke in 1984, and was initially buried in an unmarked grave! WTF?! The Commodores' 1985 hit Nightshift paid tribute to Wilson and Marvin Gaye, who also died the previous year, and reached #3 pop and #1 R&B. When Michael Jackson accepted his Grammy for Thriller in 1984, he dedicated it to Jackie.
One of the records I dug up on a recent trip to one of the few Triangle-area thrift sto's I'd never been to before was Stump Your Feet and Dance, by Kim Taylor. A Peter Brown-produced rare number from 1979 that's going for $150+ on eBay in VG+ or better condition. Mine is all scratched up, but probably still playable, and on red vinyl. Apparently there was an even rarer black vinyl version. Both on Queen Constance Records, one of the labels Peter Brown and Patrick Adams used to propagate their P&P disco spawn across the world's dancefloors.
There's an instrumental on the flip. I've also seen this track credited to Cloud One, and it turns out that's becuz it was released under their name in an earlier, longer instrumental version back in 1977, Stomp Your Feet And Dance.
Like every other Cloud One production I've heard, it was the shit! A monster disco-funk instrumental with insane, tripped out synths and a relentless, driving beat. Guaranteed to keep your body working.
A forgotten disco gem is today's featured joint - Dream World, by Don Downing.
This is the version off his 1978 album Doctor Boogie, but the track was previously released as a single back in 1973, and remixed by Tom Moulton in 1974. Found Doctor Boogie recently at the Goodwill on Garrett Road, it was one of only two records I bought there. On the same thrift sto' excursion, I also stopped by the Elliott Road PTA, and the Durham Rescue Mission on 15-501, where I picked up a dozen at $.99 per.
Today's joint by the Outhere Brothers was catchy enuf to hit #1 in the UK back in '95, but it's joint-worthy mostly becuz of its crazy, disputed "official" video.
