Date: October 3 , 1969
Release: Blue Note #31247
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Having firmly established himself as the 60s jazz guitarist second only to the great Wes Montgomery, Grant Green was willing and able to move into something new and give himself up to the emerging funk wave that would seep across the 70s. Attacked by purists as Grant’s grand selling-out, these recordings have been rediscovered and widely sampled by legions of acid-jazz aficionados. Hypnotically rhythmic and quintessentially grooving, the five tracks on this straight reissue are all exceptionally tasty bursts of authentic funk. Carryin’ On contains two solid covers, the Meters‘ “Ease Back” and James Brown‘s “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up The Door I’ll Get It Myself,” which alone make it well worth the money.
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Date: Oct 3, 1969 – Dec 8, 1969 (recording)
Release: Warner Brothers #1834
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Performing Mozart with the Chicago Symphony at the age of 11, Herbie Hancock was a child prodigy who blossomed into one of the most distinct and influential pianists in the history of modern music. His miraculous playing on all the Miles Davis albums recorded between 1963-68 reveal a musical evolution of quantum leaps and bounds. By the time Herbie graduated from Miles’ band in 1968, he left not as a sideman to the great trumpeter, but as an equal.
From the late-‘60s through the mid-‘70s, Herbie’s music moved in parallel evolution to that of Miles, with the pair both deeply immersed in genre blurring electronic experimentation. Leaving Blue Note for Warner Bros, Herbie plugged his instrument in and radically changed his sound.
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Date: July 15, 2001
Release: Blue Note #28268
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“There’s a lot of those Blue Note albums, if you were to play them right now, they’d sound like there’s no date on them…the sun doesn’t get old…there is no date on the music because it’s just as nature. There is no date on nature.”
Bobby Hutcherson
Someone once said that if Bobby Hutcherson was a horn player, he’d be a household name. The fact is that Hutcherson was a jazz revolutionary who courageously pushed the vibraphone past convention and into uncharted territory. Originally inspired by vibes master Milt Jackson, Hutcherson dramatically expanded the instruments’ emotional vocabulary, playing in a way that has yet to be surpassed.
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Date: 1981
Release: Motown #37463-5405-2
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I’ll never forgive MC Hammer for tampering with Rick James’s “Super Freak.” I’m not a Hammer hater. His debut remains in my CD changer. But I hate “U Can’t Touch This.” Hammer’s reworking of Rick James’s seminal “Super Freak” stripped the song of its ghetto edge, replacing Rick’s whooping vocals with Hammer’s jumbled, watered down raps. It doesn’t matter that “U Can’t Touch This” broke sales records, that song simply can’t touch the original. “Super Freak” appears on James’ 1981 masterwork, Street Songs, which Motown Records has recently reissued in an expanded package, which includes 12″ mixes of “Super Freak” and “Give It To Me Baby,” as well as an additional CD’s worth of material from Rick’s 1981 performance at the Long Beach Arena.
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Date: Aug 16, 1971
Release: Prestige 10035
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As a teenage Jimi Hendrix fanatic, I discovered What It Is by sheer luck. Although typical of the early ‘70s Prestige look, the album cover caught my pre-jaundiced eye with its angular shot of Jones wailing on his huge guitar, a look of pure pleasure on his face. I figured, hey, this guy rocks(!)…and Hendrix liked jazz…and its from that same time period…and…uh…the guy’s got a cool name…. So I bought the damn thing. Lucky me. Little did I know that this small purchase would help spark an expensive life-long obsession to seek out all equally great but obscure musical gems (and later, to turn that obsession into a profit-free website). A milestone in my musical self-education, I had really no idea that jazz could sound quite like this.
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Date: 2002
Release: Daptone #1
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Summertime is almost fully upon us, and it’s time to find some loud, sweaty music for all the barbecues and beach days the season brings. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Miss Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings!
Ok, so I arrived late to the Dap Dippin’ party. Released in 2002, I didn’t check out Sharon Jones until she was recommended to us by a hip couple on vacation in Palm Springs this past Christmas. Always skeptical of music recommendations from strangers (no matter how hip), I casually previewed Jones on iTunes for all of two minutes before I succumbed and bought the whole damn thing on Amazon. Maybe it was James Brown’s passing, but Jones and her Kings filled a void. With a voice somewhere between Bettye LaVette and Ann Peebles, and the brassy funk-soul rhythms of the four Dap-Kings (now famous for backing Amy Winehouse), Jones channels the past in her songs of love, loss, and righteous soul power on an album that could be a lost volume of Funky People.
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Date: 1971 (release)
Release: MCA #549382
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Fela Kuti was the Nigerian born purveyor of funky tribal beats which continue to shake the world’s foundations. A recent casualty of the AIDS virus ravaging all of Africa, Kuti lived and played hard. Like Bob Marley, his music had strong consciousness raising power mixed into its heavy afro-funk rhythms. His political messages were not lost on the Nigerian military dictatorship he often sang about, and Kuti was imprisoned on several occasions. Still, he never lost sight of the fact that the music was as important as the message, and his bands were always tight and talented enough to muster much groove.
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Date: 1968
Release: Atlantic AMCY-1240
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A funky, swirling, heady pair of side-long grooves from one of the most soulful jazzmen to ever record on the Atlantic label. Check out some of the assembled talent on this classic late-60s live date—Roy Ayers, Sonny Sharrock, Miroslav Vitous—whew!!! The chemistry was definitely happening with this super group. Both tracks stretch into a marathon of soul grinding funk, giving each of these energetic soloists room to run and run without anyone dropping the ball. Mann gives ample proof that he really was “The Man” when it came to getting down deep into the groove long before the 70s funk revolution made it the thing to do. Mann infuses each of these tasty tunes with his distinctly soulful sound, giving his compatriots plenty of heavy ideas to play with. Still, it is Sharrock’s mind-expanding guitar on “Philly Dog” that undeniably steals the show, demonstrating without a doubt that Jimi Hendrix actually had some real competition in 1968. Now for the bad news: this disc is only available on import, confirming once again the sad fact that some of the best jazz ever recorded in the States can only be found in Japan.
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Date: July 1973 ( recording)
Release: Blue Thumb #BTS62
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Born and raised in the hell of South African apartheid, Hugh Masekela triumphed over oppression by wielding what Fela Kuti referred to as the weapon of the future–music. The young Masekela was first introduced to the trumpet (his future weapon) by anti-apartheid activist Father Trevor Huddleston. In a few short years, Masekela had developed into a raw but powerful player. Beginning in the mid-’50s, he was one of the most sought after musicians in all of Africa, partnering up with such luminaries as pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand) and singer Miriam Makeba. Finding solidarity and a spirit of resistance in their music, Masekela and his contemporaries took inspiration from America’s more politically outspoken black artists, particularly Miles Davis and Paul Robeson.
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Date: 1971
Release: Rhino #79933
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Some artists did little more than play near-replicas of their studio tracks in concert. But, as we all know, live shows are the true measure of a musicians’ ability to improvise and create on the spot. Curtis, like his disciple Jimi Hendrix, certainly knew how to transform a tune into a vehicle for soul searing improvisation. Curtis knew how to take you higher when he took to the stage.
This gem of the early 70s is funky, jamming, political, and intimate. Playing to a small but incredibly in tune crowd at Greenwich Village’s Bitter End club, Curtis is given a chance to really stretch and expand. “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” Mayfield’s still relevant commentary on black on black violence and disunity, is a grooving political tract with power to rival Gil Scott-Heron‘s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
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