The Soul Searchers: "Salt Of The Earth"

Gotta start it all off with a tribute to the late, great Chuck Brown, the oft-proclaimed “father of go-go” but so much more.  I found a copy of this record a couple years back, kinda steep in price, but I was willing to pay ‘cause I’d been looking for it for a while at that time.  Come to find out, that copy had a nasty warp…not bad enough to skip the vinyl, but enough to affect the play quality significantly.  So, fast-forward to this past Wednesday, while out digging with a friend in SE Portland, I find another copy for dirt cheap, and in way better shape.  Took it home and remembered once again what an incredible album it truly was…DJ’s love these early Soul Searchers sides for the breaks, but beyond that there is a wonderful, unified artistic statement to “Salt Of The Earth” that puts it in a category of its own.  The foundations of go-go are here, in more of a raw funk format…see “Ashley’s Roachclip,” “Funk For The Folks” and “If It Ain’t Funky” for numerous breaks and samples, complete with the Afro-percussion tinge that so expertly defined go-go as a specific sound.  However, let’s go past the breaks for a moment.  Opener “I Rolled It You Hold It” (they made this record for the heads, that’s for damn sure) is pure jazz-funk-fusion, right up there with Kool & The Gang and/or the Blackbyrds for sheer jazz-funkiness, with the band flashing their dominant chops.  “Blow Your Whistle” is hardcore funk that will make even the most jaded beat-seeker’s ears perk up, it simply stomps a path right through to the one while still keeping the party going.  “Ain’t It Heavy” is East Coast harmony soul mixed up with psych-rock mixed up with early synth meditation, exploring a bold and fearless new territory in its genre mashing.  The result of all this is the creation of a record so staggeringly different and potent as to forever eliminate the labeling of Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers as a tag-line footnote in music history, rather elevating them to penultimate revolutionaries of a certain sound and time.  Like Chuck says, “one, two, sock it to your biscuit.”