Despite the upscale disco-w-strings velvet rope fantasy stereotype, Barry White, "The Hustle," Deodato*, what struck me reviewing '70s disco DJ playlists in The Disco Files was how much gutbucket country blues-jazz-soul-funk gets played in the underground gay discos. The first two tracks following are in that spirit and the other three I'm pretty sure I found in TDFs.
"That's What Love Will Make You Do," Little Milton (1971): Stax/Volt soul single. A country blues soul workout with a buoyant groove. There's a 21 minute extended mix out there, in case you looking for the full meal disco deal.
"Let My People Go," Darondo (1972): Obscure soul man from the Bay Area. Put out three singles in the early '70s, then got hitched and decamped to Fiji. Slinky funk groove set to beseeching blues plaint. Brings the slow disco heat.
"Njia (Nija) Walk (Street Walk)," The Fatback Band (1973): Proto-disco and proto-hiphop, The Fatback Band were in the middle of chart R&B and dance music throughout the '70s. TFB's "King Tim III (Personality Jock)" came out a few months before "Rapper's Delight" in '79 and gets mentioned as one of the first commercially released hiphop or rap songs. They are not the JBs, nobody is, or even the Ohio Players, but solid P-Funk approved funk.
"Soul Turn Around," Blue Mitchell (1973): Jazz trumpeter Mitchell goes way back and is reputably the most recorded trumpeter sideman on soul jazz organ records in the 1950s. Next he played in the Horace Silver Quintet from 1958 to 1964, and appears on an all-time jazz album favorite, "Song for My Father" (1965), and then went on to play in Ray Charles' touring band in the late '60s and early '70s. In short, he was a soul jazz pro's pro from the 1950s through the 1970s. And I have a big weakness for hot instrumental pop like this. Another one of those '90s retrospective series that I love was Rhino's Rock Instrumental Classics, five volumes, which included many jazz-funk and disco classics but not this one, not so much a failing of the series as another indication of what a brilliant period the disco era was for the rock era pop instrumental.
"Philadelphia," B.B. King (1974): B.B. King made a disco record?! No way, exclaims the disco sucks people. But he did. Here's B.B. King channeling TSOP's funky disco sound.
*- Brazilian pianist, composer, and jazzy disco record producer Eumir Deodato has a daughter married to actor Stephen Baldwin and a granddaughter married to Justin Bieber. Keeping up the legacy of the '70s disco era's decadence, they're apparently still getting into trouble at nightclubs in the 2020s.
No comments:
Post a Comment