Bobby Womack: "Understanding"

Woooooooooooo!!!!!!  This is some down-and-dirty, FONKY soul right here; it didn’t leave the turntable for about a month after the first time I played it!  This is an extremely rare occasion for me, considering the amount of records I cycle through during any given four-week period.  Not exactly a rare LP, but that’s neither here nor there when you’re in the company of a masterpiece.  You may think I’m exaggerating a bit, but this matches up with any funk/soul classic you’d care to mention from the same time-frame.  It encompasses the gutsiness of Riot-era Sly, the guitar theatrics of early Funkadelic, the uptown smoothness of the Philly and Chicago vocal groups, the politics of Marvin and Stevie, and even the Southern, gospel-drenched, country-soul flavor of ‘70’s Stax.  Womack’s razor-shredding voice testifies like a man possessed, hearkening back to the days when “soul music” wasn’t even a term, and the only place to hear such raw passion was the church.  However, this is no gospel album, as Womack mines deeply personal, secular territory to carve out a feeling for the material.  The blistering “I Can Understand It” was a huge hit for the New Birth, but Bobby’s original rendition is just as interesting.  It’s slower, and has more of a deliberate, loping drag to it, eventually propelling itself into an all-out funk-rock stomp via Womack’s fiery guitar leads.  “Woman’s Gotta Have It” follows, an effortless, mid-tempo number that is about precisely what you think it is.  Other key tracks are the near-country “Got To Get You Back,” the ferocious, thudding “Simple Man,” the back-porch, blues-with-strings meditation “Ruby Dean,” and the topical early ‘70’s cut “Harry Hippie,” a tune actually written by Jim Ford, yet found in its most definitive incarnation here.  Bobby Womack pulled off something unique with this LP, in that he took all the complex components that made early ‘70’s soul so fascinating, then added a gutbucket earthiness to the brew that kept the head nodding even as the mind contemplated.  A gem.