The Fabulous Counts: "Jan Jan"

Wow.  Didn’t think I’d ever find an OG copy of this, and for $5???  That’s an unbelievable price for this piece of jazz-funk-soul history.  I’ve read a few reviews of this LP that said it sounded too much like The Fabulous Counts were trying to imitate The Meters, but I don’t hear that at all.  The key difference is bandleader and primary songwriter Mose Davis, who plays stuff on the organ that Art Neville could never do; Davis sounds more like Jack McDuff than he does Booker T. Jones, and is audibly more studied in jazz than Neville.  The other difference is the grooves themselves; The Fabulous Counts have a firmly uptempo, tightened Detroit sensibility to their funk, and are pretty far from the stuttering, second-line pocket that The Meters concocted.  Taken on its own terms, this is such a fantastic record, reinforced with a handful of proto-jazz-funk covers of late ‘60’s standards, including “It’s A Man’s Man’s World,” “Hey Jude,” “Soulful Strut” and “Who’s Making Love.”  Then there are the originals, which are the true treasures of the set, among them the landmark title track (later covered by Grant Green), the spaced-organ-jazz of “The Bite,” the churning, driving “Dirty Red,” the exploratory modal funk of “The Other Thing,” and the exquisite, hallucinatory, break-heavy “Girl From Kenya.”  Two years after this LP, in 1971, The Fabulous Counts would rename themselves simply The Counts, and release the swirling funk psychedelia of “What’s Up Front That Counts.”  Yet with “Jan Jan,” they laid the foundation not just for their own future efforts, but for many other instrumental jazz and funk combos still searching for a sound to latch onto.  “Jan Jan” is a straight-up blueprint record, a strand of soul DNA that demands re-examination.