Flying Funk
and Flying
Groove:
The Revolution Will Not Be Homogenized
(Continued)
Oliver Nelson, an incredibly innovative arranger,
contributes the track “Skull Session” from the
album of the same name. The piece has a languid, funky feel
and features an outrageously talented band that includes
Nelson, saxophonist Jerome Richardson, guitarist Lee Ritenour,
keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith, drummer Jim Gordon, and
percussionists Shelly Manne and Willie Bobo. The track features
very heavy (as in so far forward in the track as to cultivate
brain damage) ARP synthesizer work by Mike Wofford. It’s
not especially innovative considering what other folks (most
notably Hervie Hancock and Weather Report’s Joe Zawinul)
were doing with synthesizers in 1975, but it’s a very
well-conceived and arranged piece of music and will stick
in your mind long after it’s over. Nelson died later
the same year “Skull Session” was recorded.
The very next track is a Nelson composition called “Afrique”
that features the Count Basie Orchestra arranged and conducted
by Nelson and recorded in 1970. It’s not really a
groove track, but it’s a really good composition and
the arrangement doesn’t sound like any Count Basie
you’ve ever heard. Hubert Laws provides solo flute
work, but the vibe or marimba that is used isn’t credited
on the listing provided here.
David Axelrod was a record producer at Capitol
who provided signature sounds for Lou Rawls, Cannonball
Adderley, and the Electric Prunes. He was also an ambitious
composer and arranger. Perhaps best known for the loud,
funky drum work on many of his tracks, his work has been
sampled extensively by hip-hop artists including Lauren
Hill. Here we get the Overture from his Messiah,
a unique musical work that combines classically-based string
arrangements with a soul rhythm section and touches of electric
piano and distorted electric guitar. It’s not like
much you’ve probably heard before or since, like Andrew
Lloyd Webber with a keen ear, a bit more avant-garde taste,
and some soul. Another pleasant surprise on Flying Groove
is the track “El Pampero” by Brazilian tenor
sax player Gato Barbieri. Barbieri started out with a fiery
style that was influenced by avant-garde American saxophonists
like Archie Shepp. He later adopted what can only be described
as a neutered smooth jazz style, but on the performance
here, recorded at the 1971 Montreux Jazz Festival, he plays
with a great deal of energy, accompanied by Lonnie Liston
Smith, the omnipresent Bernard Purdie, and bassist Chuck
Rainey. It’s a reminder that some of musicians who
later appeared to be nothing more than commercial hacks
were actually talented and probably just responding to the
pressures of the marketplace.
Flying Funk offers a similar collection,
though it also includes a few non-jazz soul and funk performers
like the Jimmy Castor Bunch and the Main Ingredient. Jimmy
Castor, who played saxophone and did vocals, is probably
most famous for his novelty hit “Troglodyte (Cave
Man)”, but the group was a source of some very solid
grooves, such as “It’s Just Begun,” included
here. Featuring some percolating electric bass by Doug Gibson
and a King Curtis-influenced sax solo by Castor, it’s
hard to imagine anyone not getting out on the dance floor
with this one. The Main Ingredient, a vocal trio who had
their biggest hit with “Everybody Plays the Fool”
features Cuba Gooding, the father of the Oscar-award winning
actor of the same name. Their “Happiness Is Just Around
the Bend” is a positive slice of early ‘70s
soul complete with Philly-style string arrangement.
Two of the best performances on this disc
are those by Nina Simone. Her rendition of Aretha Franklin’s
“Save Me” sounds like a female James Brown with
jazz vocal chops, and was recorded with a big band that
includes a young Eric Gale on guitar. “Funkier Than
a Mosquito’s Tweeter” is a Tina Turner composition
originally performed by Ike & Tina Turner, but Simone
makes it so thoroughly her own that it’s difficult
to imagine anyone else getting the better of her on this
song. On this one she has a relatively small combo backing
her, with Don Alias (George Benson, James Taylor, Al Jarreau,
Quincy Jones, Chick Corea, Miles Davis and Roberta Flack)
on drums. Simone squeezes so much disdain from her voice
on this track it’ll make you cringe. Also back on
this disc is Gil Scott-Heron with “Home Is Where the
Hatred Is,” which singer Esther Phillips also recorded
for Creed Taylor’s Kudu label. When Aretha Franklin
won the Grammy Award in 1971 she gave the award to Phillips,
who she felt deserved the award. The song is a brutally
honest account of junkiedom, and Scott-Heron’s version
is blessed with the same great talent that backed him on
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
Lonnie Liston Smith contributes a pair of
performances with his group The Cosmic Echoes. One of these,
“A Chance For Peace” has Reggie Lucas, veteran
of Miles Davis’ funk-on-steroids 1973-75 band. Another
member of that group, alto saxophone player Sonny Fortune,
appears on the Weldon Irvine track “We Getting Down,”
and the funkiness of much of the Flying Dutchman material
demonstrates just how influential Davis’ post-Bitches
Brew scorched Earth funk was. Though by 1976 Davis
had embarked on a five-year period of silence, there is
no question that he pioneered the sound that got a lot of
people—musicians and listeners—thinking in this
general direction.
The New Birth’s “Got To Get A
Knutt,” recorded in 1972, is an inspired piece of
psychedelic funk tomfoolery of the sort that will probably
show up on a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack someday. The group
could do just about anything, from funky big band arrangements
to Motown-style soul, but on this Sly Stone-influence piece
of weirdness they just let fly with some free-association
vocals starting at about three minutes in (the track is
over seven minutes long). The instrumental portion of the
group was comprised of a group known as the Nite-Liters,
and their track “Afro Strut” is also included
on Flying Funk.
It should be clear to anyone who cares to
listen to these two compilations in their entirety that
what was essentially a black music renaissance in the 1970s
has, by the dawn of the 21st Century, influenced all genres
of popular music. It appears that a new generation of jazz
musicians, as well as some who were around back then, are
ready to continue to progress rather than recapitulating
and pretending that this fertile period in black music history
never happened. The mending of black popular music, which
the largely white American entertainment conglomerates tore
asunder, has now been underway for nearly four decades.
Surely it’s time to stop fighting about which genre
is which and what the relative importance of each element
in the musical pot is.
