Guitarist Willie ‘Junei’ Lee spent the late-seventies touring with with Albert King, Curtis Mayfield, and The Emotions, before returning home to Gary, Indiana, to focus on his own sound. ‘The only artists I listened to was Hendrix and Santana,’ he recalls.
‘The emissions coming from his home studio were entirely different, however, as Let’s Ride channels the Euro sensibilities of Kraftwerk or Italo over virtuosic guitar. ‘I just didn’t want to sound like anyone else.’
‘Let’s Ride anticipated Chicago house by a few years. Pressed in minuscule numbers in 1987 on Pharaohs Records, the 45 never connected with the nearby scenes in Chicago and Detroit where it might have found purchase in fertile soils. Decades later, though, it found new life as the bed for Kaytranada’s Scared To Death.’

Crucial, ecstatic, magnificent disco, rinsed nowadays by the likes of Theo Parrish and DJ Harvey. Producer and writer Jerry Peter’s crowning ten minutes — notwithstanding credits with everyone from Foster Sylvers and Gene Harris to Aretha and Marvin.
Plus the mighty Bourgie Bourgie on the flip.

Ace kid funk, with coolly blunted singing by the little un, and a good old-fashioned break-and-a-half.

Terrific soulful Northern banger — a Wigan anthem — and classic Motor City fire from Jack Ashford’s Pied Piper Productions. Performed, written and produced by LC.

Superb, sexed-up, Paradise Garage disco fire, produced by Jesse Boyce and Moses Dillard.

Magnificent, smoking sister-funk, both sides. ‘What is wrong with the men / Trying to do us in.’ Produced by West Coast legend Miles Grayson.

‘Two tracks from early 70s Los Angeles, around the time of his eponymous first LP. Say You is a superb updating of the Monitors’ harmony hit from 1965, given the distinctively sensitive McNeir treatment. I’m Sorry is a self-penned slow-burner that builds a perfect dancefloor beat.’

‘Former Mind & Matter bandmates James ‘Jimmy Jam’ Harris and Michael Dixon teamed up for this 1978 gospel-boogie banger, originally on the private Mad label.’