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Grooves & Glitches: Soul Jazz Records Presents New Orleans Funk – New Orleans: The Original Sound of Funk 1960-75

New Orleans Funk

With Grooves & Glitches, we hand-pick excellent vinyl from the past and present to bring straight to you, giving entire sides ripped and uncut.

Album Title: New Orleans Funk – New Orleans: The Original Sound of Funk 1960-75
Label: Soul Jazz Records [UK]
Release Date: Oct 23 2000

A fairly recently released collection of regional funk gems, with some real groovers and rarities.  Here’s side two, straight from the vinyl.

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MP3: Side Two

Track listing:
1. Eddie Bo – “Check Your Bucket”
2. Professor Longhair – “Big Chief”
3. Cyril Neville – “Tell Me What’s On Your Mind”
4. Lee Dorsey and Betty Harris – “Love Lots of Lovin”

From Soul Jazz Records:

This is a definitive collection of New Orleans Funk featuring acknowledged masters of funk next to some of the earlier artists who shaped the meaning of funk. The album is also filled with many rare, sought after and undiscovered funk tracks. It covers the period from the emergence of New Orleans Funk in the early 1960′s through to the mid-seventies. The record is an essential part of anyone in any way interested in Funk’s record collection. It has some vital ingredients in it that you can’t find elsewhere. With the sound of the New Orleans Funeral March Bands, Mardi Gras Indian Tribes and Saturday Night Fish Fries all as inspiration New Orleans Funk developed into a unique sound. New Orleans is a port town. Originally owned by the French, this was where many slaves were brought from the West Indies. Many of these slaves came from Haiti and brought with them the religion of Voodoo and its drums and music. It became one of the first parts of America to develop a strong African-American culture leading to the invention of Jazz in the early 1900s. A main feature of Jazz in New Orleans were the Jazz Funeral Marching bands. Solemn Brass bands accompanying a coffin would, on burial, be joined by a second line of drummers and dancers which would turn the event into a celebration of the spirit cutting free from earth. This African tradition is strong in New Orleans and still goes on to this day. The backline drums play a syncopated style that is neither on the beat nor the off-beat. It is these rhythms that are the basis of New Orleans Funk. The album comes with a booklet presenting a historical explanation to how and why this music came about, and with lots of information about the people involved.

Grooves & Glitches: Jean-Pierre Massiera

jean-pierre-psychosesMy eternal gratitude once again goes out to dear friend Jason Willett of the True Vine.  Exposing me to yet another instant favorite, in early December he introduced me to two valued recent acquisitions for the store: Jean-Pierre Massiera’s Psychoses compilations spanning 1963-1978 and 1976-1981.

Massiera is a French renaissance man and cult favorite who has worn the hat of producer, engineer, composer & musician, and charted his own unique career in music.  Massiera cut his teeth as an instrumentalist, forming his first band, instrumental surf-rock peddlers Les Milords, in 1962.

By 1967, Massiera switched gears to concentrate on studio work; he founded a large studio in his hometown of Nice and fed his experimental tendencies by taking session work for more established artists.

In 1968, Massiera unveiled his most widely acknowledged work, Les Maledictus Sound, a bewildering, largely instrumental document laden with extensive cuts blatantly lifted from prominent tracks, warped sound effects and high production values.  Massiera continues his career to this day, balancing work for more successful mainstream artists and exploring his own experimental urges, resulting in a prolific and astoundingly eclectic body of work.

Some cuts from Psychoses: Freakoid 1963-1981:

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MP3: Piranhas – La turbie pirhanienne

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MP3: JPM and Co – Dali court

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MP3: Les Chats – La gâteau du peuple.mp3

Grooves & Glitches: Sam Cooke

Credit: Rob Guillory

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MP3: Sam Cooke – Only Sixteen

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MP3: Sam Cooke – Chain Gang

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MP3: Sam Cooke – Cupid

Despite my penchant for the overly complex, over-wrought and over-thought, I’ve always found it immensely fascinating to ponder what makes someone a true musical icon.  For all the inventive, ground-breaking things we hear that push our boundaries, which are the ones that will stand the infamous “test of time” and become something that benchmarks a momentous time in history.  Who will ultimately become a monumental figure in music and art, a measure of things to come and a force to re-contextualize what has come before.

Sam Cooke is undoubtedly one of those icons.

A masterful songwriter, precise and profound expression couched in simplicity and relatively minimal pop music.  Simple melodic progression serves as the drive and focus of every composition, providing a backdrop which accents a timeless and singular vocal talent.

Odds are Cooke is one of those names that if you know him, you love him; if you don’t know the name, you likely know one of his hits intimately. Thus, it’s always a treat for me to dig through the bins and find something, anything, with Cooke’s work on it. Above, you can grab few of his famed tracks from a 1965 hits collection.

Grooves & Glitches: New Order – Acid House Mixes by 808 State (1988)

This is the inaugural edition of a hopefully continuing feature, our Vinylmore Rips series which brings you random vinyl-exclusive releases as MP3s.

Set to be an irregular column, it will only appear when something on vinyl-only release has truly piqued my interest.

This week we get some elegant New Order mixes from electronic legends 808 State (Wiki).

Today’s release:
New Order – Acid House Mixes by 808 State (1988)
UK 2004 12″ Single; Rephlex: CAT 806 EP [Also as limited white-label promo 12" Single]

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MP3: “Blue Monday” So Hot Mix by 808 State (07:46)

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MP3: “Confusion” Acid House Mix by 808 State (04:55)

Remarks: Remixed in 1988 by Graham Massey, Gerald Simpson and Martin Price. Never really intended as a proper release. Release date: 27 September 2004