country blues-jazz-soul-funk proto-disco

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. 

Rock & Roll Showman: David Johansen, 1950-2025, R.I.P.

When I first read Robert Christgau's memoir, Going into the City (2015), I was disappointed to learn that his favorite album of all-time had changed to Television's Marquee Moon, and was no longer The Clash's debut album; US version, that came out in 1979, for me, original 1977 version for him. (Thanks for the edit.) I'd had the impression for years, decades, that The Clash album was his favorite and one of mine too; I liked that we shared that. Claiming Marquee Moon now, although a good album, struck me as a lame homer gesture. Somewhat understandable as something people do as they get older, things closer to us grow more dear, but too damn austere an album for an Xgau number one, by my lights. I might have expected his move would have soured me a bit on his Stranded (1978) Desert Island faves the New York Dolls but not at all. Actually, either one of the Dolls original classic albums from the early 1970s, New York Dolls (1973) or Too Much Too Soon (1974), would have made more sense to me as his all-time album favorite: NYC homers but undeniably, quintessentially, irrationally exuberant rock & roll music. Todd Rundgren gives the debut the glam rock power pop sheen of a big loud (if somewhat rickety) runaway subway train. "Personality Crisis" and "Jet Boy" should have been hits; "Frankenstein" is an epic hard rock masterpiece. The second album, TMTS, wasn't the song album of the debut but Shadow Morton's production might have sounded even better. The band turns covers of Sonny Boy Williamson, The Coasters, and Philly International, really, everything they touch, into a gloriously big and trashy burlesque of 1950s rock & roll. The Cramps, for one celebrated example, were born of such lustful irreverence. My enthusiasm for everything Dolls even carried over into all Johansen's early solo albums, even the often maligned In Style (1979), and up to 1982's live album Live It Up, which I saw at the Euphoria Tavern in Portland, OR. Great show; and Johansen was a great showman. NYC's proud idiosyncratic version of Mick Jagger. I lost interest with Johansen's Buster Poindexter persona, however; found "Hot Hot Hot" more annoying than anything else, but still liked that he had found a niche in the music industry. He played in the SNL house band for years. And then I fell back into the fold with their 2006 comeback album, One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This, and liked even a song or two on their subsequent last two studio albums, Cause I Sez So ('09) and Dancing Backwards in High Heels ('11); if overall each significantly less than the album previous to it. They were aging out of being able to play Dolls style rock & roll but deserve credit for still being able to do so convincingly for as long as they did. But I'll always think of Johansen lead style as going best with the sludgy feedback roar of Johnny Thunders' guitar; again, not unlike Jaggers and Richards. David Johansen was one of the great 1970s NYC rockers and, in the end, a consummate music biz pro, going from the lower east side all the way uptown and back. And represents some favorite music, inspired by his original Desert Island endorsement, I still share with Xgau. 

"Looking for a Kiss," peak period Dolls. Click on the youtube connection. 

Herbie Hancock Group Funks It Up On Danish TV, 1976:

I'm no expert on solo projects related to Miles Davis' electric period; I've heard albums by Weather Report Mahavishnu Orchestra, Keith Jarrett, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Chick Korea, and Herbie Hancock but not even close to all of them. And what I've heard has their charms but most strikingly they always seem to back up my sense of how wildly out there and singularly awesome were those Miles electric records. None of the members of his electric albums on their own ever sound very much like any of those Miles records to me. If anything comes close it'd be some space rock patches on Herbie Hancock's Sextant (1973) or Thrust (1974), everything else by Hancock is way too pop funky for the dark heavy space rock explorations of Bitches Brew or Live Evil, etc. (BTW, where does that space rock sound on the electric Miles come from, anyway? Drugs maybe play a part but I think it's at least in part Miles' infatuation with Stockhausen inspired bleeping and atmospheric goofing on the keyboards.) Anyway, this longish Hancock live set appeared on Danish TV in 1976. It goes with the long instrumental passages in early Earth Wind & Fire or the Crusaders more than any Miles. But I'm still stanning for groove music like this, as its own reward, no lesser step child to free jazz or pop music with words; if, in this particular comparison, not as beloved to me as Miles' electric albums. Nonetheless, Hancock's jazz-funk is its own thing and I like it just fine. Sure, there are some smooth jazzercising genteel affectations to Herbie-- you ought to see him later in his tinted glasses and neck scarves (Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld, right?)-- but he charts in the classic funk period ("Chameleon," '74) and the early hiphop era ("Rockit," '83) and, again, in the acid jazz phase of the EDM explosion in England in the early '90s ("Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)"); that's three decades on the dance music charts. Feel the groove. 

Lee "Scratch" Perry's Upsetter's 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle 1973

 

Deep soundtrack to A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James searing and sprawling 2014 novel about Jamaica in the 1970s and violent crucible of gang cultures and colonial control and CIA guns and a Jamaican diaspora. 

Actually, the whole album, often called Blackboard Jungle Dub, and arguably the first dub album (1973), is a grower and a complex affair. Soundtrack music expansive and subtly orchestrated. Five drummers, three bass players (including "Family Man"), four guitar players, three organists, two pianists, melodica (Augustus Pablo), trombone, trumpet (New Orleans in the house), three more percussion guys (including Noel "Skully" Simms and Uziah "Sticky" Thompson), and Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby engineering the sound system, mixing and matching uncannily simple and impossibly Island-time seductive "riddims" with echoey accents and dub reverb into this moody vanguard vortex of exquisite sufferers lamentations and ebullient keep-on-keeping-on Blackboard Jungle Dub groove power. I've picked up gossip somewhere that Perry gets too much credit for the production that should go to King Tubby. I don't know about any of that other than to note Perry is listed as a musician (percussion) and Tubby isn't. Always with the office politics, I'm afraid. Well, despite or because of the these frictions the record is grandiose and sentimental but humble and organic and catchy and undeniable and absolutely bravura in its indelible studio dub music soundtrack to Kingston, Jamaica in the 1970s. An homage to The Black Ark studio in Perry's backyard. And deep backdrop to James' epic story of Bob Marley's Jamaica. 

And if this 1970s Jamaica story interests you at all you gotta know Timothy White's epic biographical treatment of Marley, Catch a Fire, latest edition because it never stopped expanding until White's early death in 2002. 

Blackboard Jungle Dub. One of the great world pop sounds of the 20th century, which is one of the things the last century did have going for it. Lots of great popular music. 

    

"I Can Understand It": Bobby Womack Takes It to the Discos

 Kokomo, British soul group. Peaked at 13 on the Disco File Top 20 in 1975. 

New Birth, funky Motown spinoffs. Included Marvin Gaye's buddy Harvey Fuqua. Reached number 4 on R&B chart and number 35 on Hot 100 in 1973. Readymade for the discos. 

Bobby Womack's "I Can Understand It" original, 1972. Proto-jungle-stomp-disco. 

"Right Down Here," Asha Puthli (1973)

 

Right down where? Proto-disco queen. Immersed in early disco's dancefloor groove ambience and hedonistic fantasy; lots of wah-wah, strings, and sensual polyrhythmic accents. Gets over with a sexed-up personality and breathy bedroom vocals more than big diva pipes. Hung out with Warhol. Influenced Donna Summers' "Love to Love You Baby" fashion sense. And she's still going strong. Here's the whole story from The Guardian: 

1970s disco queen Asha Puthli

"No matter where you are, girl I will meet you there"

G. C. Cameron sang lead for the Spinners on "It's a Shame." A grand epitaph in my book. But he allegedly, in addition, has six voices. This one, "No Matter Where," is Curtis Mayfield. Wound tight and  urban. It has a formal quality that might sound like it'd be exercise but instead is fierce and exact: "No Matter Where." A piercing urgency; if you're not getting down to it on the dancefloor you're on the edge of your seat. He also, reputably, does Smokey Robinson, The Isley Brothers, and Willie Hutch, any of them half as good as his Curtis and he's legend. Oh yeah, and "No Matter Where" was on rotation in the NYC dance clubs in 1973, as I learned from Vince Aletti's Disco Files. The classic era disco desktop reference book.

Thank God It's Disco Friday. 

The Ballad of Orange and Grape By Muriel Rukeyser (1973)

 After you finish your work

after you do your day

after you've read your reading

after you've written your say –

you go down the street to the hot dog stand,

one block down and across the way.

On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth

    century.

Most of the windows are boarded up,

the rats run out of a sack –

sticking out of the crummy garage

one shiny long Cadillac;

at the glass door of the drug-addiction center,

a man who'd like to break your back.

But here's a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose

    and pink, too.

Frankfurters frankfurters sizzle on the steel

where the hot-dog-man leans –

nothing else on the counter

but the usual two machines,

the grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty,

I face him in between.

A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on

    walking.

I watch the man as he stands and pours

in the familiar shape

bright purple in the one marked ORANGE

orange in the one marked GRAPE,

the grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE

and orange drink in the GRAPE.

Just the one word large and clear, unmistakeable, on each

    machine.

I ask him : How can we go on reading

and make sense out of what we read? –

How can they write and believe what they're writing,

the young ones across the street,

while you go on pouring grape in ORANGE

and orange into the one marked GRAPE –?

(How are we going to believe what we read and we write

    and we hear and we say and we do?)

He looks at the two machines and he smiles

and he shrugs and smiles and pours again.

It could be violence and nonviolence

it could be white and black          women and men

it could be war and peace or any

binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend.

Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don't

    do.

On a corner in East Harlem

garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape,

forgetfulness, a hot street of murder,

misery, withered hope,

a man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE

and orange into the one marked GRAPE,

pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.

"In Every Dream Home a Heartache," Roxy Music (1973)

 

They don't make Roxy Music like they used to. 

Maybe the best Eno and Ferry ever played together? Dark, weird, and funny.