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| “My music was party music. I wanted the people to get the feeling of the music as a party. I wanted it always to feel like it was recorded live in some place. That’s why we have that kind of sound.” --Bill Curtis, founder and drummer of The Fatback Band One of the best-kept secrets of the early ‘70s, Let’s Do It Again is a classic feel-good party album loaded with some of the tightest instrumental funk jams around. Released in 1972, the album gave the Fatback Band its first successful R&B single, “Street Dance.” An infectious in-the-pocket vamp that crosses the danceable grooves of the Meters and the JB’s with the driving Memphis soul of the Stax Horns, “Street Dance” hits its delirious high with a funk-jazz flute solo by future Charles Mingus band member George Adams. The album’s opening track, “Street Dance” is built on a brick house-solid funk foundation: catchy rhythm guitar hooks, punchy horn charts, thick bouncing bass, and, of course, those fatback drums. The prominence of heavy percussion in the mix makes it amply clear that Fatback was drummer Bill Curtis’ band. His unstoppable funk drumming is on par with the some of best practitioners of the art: John “Jabbo” Starks (James Brown), Steve Ferrone (Average White Band), and Joseph “Ziggy” Modeliste (The Meters). The drums on “Free Form” are anything but, as Curtis locks with bassist John Flipping in a bullet-proof groove that doesn’t let up. “Free Form” sounds as if it might have been a source of inspiration for Average White Band’s 1973 funk-instrumental hit, “Pick Up The Pieces.” A pair of slow covers, Glen Campbell’s hit “Wichita Lineman” and Bread’s “Baby I’m A Want You,” give the album its obligatory “quiet storm” interlude (remember this was 1972), before things heat up again with the sizzling title track. “Goin’ To See My Baby” and “Give Me One More Chance” feature the album’s only vocals, which are little more than some simple lines repeated over and over, along with soulful backing chants and jazzy scats. As was the case with nearly all the band’s early recordings for the Perception label, the vocals and lyrics on Let’s Do It Again take a backseat to the groove. Only later did the band get really serious about singing and songwriting, shortening their name to Fatback in 1977 and scoring their first Top Ten hit a year later with “ I Like Girls.” Their 1979 single, “King Time III (Personality Jock)” is considered by some to be the very first rap single ever made. A seminal early-‘70s funk ensemble that successfully evolved with hits through the ‘80s, the Fatback Band was one of the few groups that managed to stick with its trademark sound through successive musical styles. --John Ballon (email)
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