Coming between What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On, this 1972 soundtrack is a bonafide masterpiece.
A lovely, fresh, intimate, uncluttered blend of nu soul and glo-fi, from Brighton.
Ebullient Troutman business, great throughout, with exemplary Zapped funk, fine ballads and a couple of irresistible rare grooves. CD from Expansion.
Stompers, floaters and ballads, with several impossible to get otherwise.
George Butler was head of A&R at Blue Note during the seventies. He co-produced Black Byrd with the Mizells; he signed Bobbi Humprey. When Blue Note closed in 1978, one of his first projects for Columbia was a disco-funk project with the legendary bebop saxophonist Benny Golson, on the cusp of his own comeback.
Golson was at high school with John Coltrane. He featured in a deadly late-fifties Jazz Messengers lineup; also Art Farmer’s Tentet. He wrote I Remember Clifford and Whisper Not.
It’s telling, how the jazz establishment has always despised this record. The title track was a humungous rare groove anthem, guaranteed to tear up a dance with its swinging, swaggering, musically-inspired upfulness, school of Walking In Rhythm and Music Is My Sanctuary.
Primitive choirs, spacious breaks, congas, old-boy rappers impersonating the devil, cast-recordings, thumping bass, and JB copyists — all with a heavy slathering of gospel gravy.
Storming mixtape, stuffed with scorchers, funk to boogie to testifying and congregational. Great, great soul music, however you take it; killingly blended.
Originally released as fifty CDRs in 2010, and still fresh.