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From '50s NYC clubland, a Yma Sumac-inspired version of "Babalu" by jazz/calypso singer Phyllis Branch.
Category Archives: Soul
Ed Bland
Ed Bland is an American composer, musical arranger and producer with a considerable catalog of contemporary classical compositions – “Art Music,” as Bland would note – to his name. Bland is, at least among a coterie of vintage soul fans, … Continue reading
Get rhythm
The drum machine was one of a wave of early mass-produced electronic instruments and studio devices in the ‘60s that expanded, by quantum leaps, the technological and creative bounds of music and recording. Historically speaking, however, early drum machines like … Continue reading
Cinema funky
Just as its antecedents in the mid-‘60s had their sitar interludes and fuzztone atmospherics, the hipper cinema of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s oozed with wah-wah guitars, jazz basslines and funky backbeats. And why not? Whatever Tinseltown’s machinations, film … Continue reading
2007/09/24
Posted in Exotica/Space-Age, Jazz Obscura, Latin, Miscellaneous Flotsam, Now Sound, Soul
7 Comments
Detroit City
Any attempt to encapsulate the history of 1960s Detroit soul in a few meager paragraphs is destined to failure. A few items are worth noting, though. First of all, Detroit was one of the powerhouse cities, if not the powerhouse … Continue reading
1968: The R&B instrumental
It could be a jazz organist angling for a catchy original number to climb the R&B; charts. It could be a young six-piece combo who played together in their high school band and who were now letting loose with a … Continue reading
Latin funk
Funk and salsa, as musical forms, were both ascendant in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. They were forms that were nourished within culturally aware, politically mobilized communities. According to the tradition that America will always co-opt its most disenfranchised, … Continue reading
Their hearts filled with love
No lofty cultural themes or sub-sub-sub-genre exhumations this week on Office Naps, just a survey of 1969, that transitional year when funky drums collided with a vestigial girl-group aesthetic. Heartache, sequined jumpsuits to ensue. 1. Betty Everett, 1900 Yesterday (Uni) … Continue reading
A black & white affair
It’s not the psychedelized, socially conscious soul of Sly & the Family Stone or Cloud Nine-era Temptations I’m talking about. Nor is it the tripped-out voodoo of the first Funkadelic record (Funkadelic) either, though that’s getting a bit closer to … Continue reading
