Superior Movement: "Key To Your Heart"

Five guys with goofy expressions on their faces holding a giant key—that’s the image you see on the cover of the Superior Movement’s one and only album.  Most of their music is fairly down-tempo for a boogie record, but the couple prime floor-filler cuts they lay down more than make up for the disparity, and really, the slower tracks aren’t bad either.  DJ’s and dance aficionados will be most interested in “Wide Shot” and “Be My Cinderella,” both of which have an understated minimalism to them, echoing the aftershocks felt by Prince and Zapp’s new wave funk.  Scattered among the synth-bass stormers are kicked-back, silky R&B tracks that absolutely ooze with romantic ambiance, made palatable by warm production and the group’s swooning harmonies.  If you look closely at the credits, you’ll find the names of several Chicago music legends, like Tom Tom 84, Morris Jennings, Vincent Wilburn, Louis Satterfield, Don Myrick, etc., proving that the Windy City’s vibrant and idiosyncratic soul tradition had more than one golden age, and was going strong as late as 1982.

The New Birth: "The New Birth"

The record that started it all for Harvey Fuqua’s New Birth dynasty.  Merging multiple groups that he had been writing and producing for in various settings, including the relentlessly funky instrumental unit The Nite-Liters, Fuqua essentially created a sort of funky soul orchestra, albeit with different pieces than any traditional orchestra.  The unique and exhilarating New Birth formula is firmly in place on this first LP, with large vocal arrangements cozying up to lightly funky grooves from The Nite-Liters, creating a huge sound that’s not quite sweet soul, not quite heavy funk, not quite deep soul, but incorporates strands of each medium.  My favorite tunes are the joyous “UNH Song,” the righteous “Brand New Lover,” and the funk burner “Pretty Words Don’t Mean A Thing (Lie To Me).”  The group even tries their hand at a sizzling version of the Rufus Thomas classic “Do The Funky Chicken,” taken at breakneck speed while containing delectable saxophone breaks, a thumping, sample-worthy drum-break, and obligatory chicken sound effects.  Fuqua and The New Birth must have been over the moon at this new combination they’d developed, and sure enough, it wouldn’t be long until they cultivated their musical ethic into a chart-topping, million-selling, hit-making soul machine.

Irma Thomas: "In Between Tears"

Swamp Dogg (Jerry Williams, Jr.) in full effect, this time working with New Orleans soul royalty Irma Thomas.  Williams and Thomas make quite a team, with Thomas’s voice expertly conveying the inherent, sometimes even despondent, pain that was always such a major part of the Dogg’s material.  I’m sure Swamp brought some of that pain on himself; he’s using a female vocalist as his sounding board here, but his song titles reveal the truth of his situations—“She’ll Never Be Your Wife,” “What’s So Wrong With You Loving Me,” “You’re The Dog (I Do The Barking Myself).”  This LP is, in some ways, similar to another Swamp-produced gem I discussed in a previous post, Doris Duke’s “I’m A Loser,” although it generally has a happier, more uplifting energy than that heartbroken song cycle, despite the cynical names of the tunes themselves.  While I said earlier that Thomas knows how to sing pain, she also has a stronger voice than Doris Duke, and the confluence of that strength with a more upbeat set of songs from Swamp Dogg leads the listener to ponder that Irma Thomas will fare much better than Duke in the heartbreak category, and will come out okay in the end, despite her troubles.  Everything that is great about the “Tears” record can be found in the lovely title cut, in the unflinchingly honest “These Four Walls,” and in the epic, 12-plus-minutes “Medley:  Coming From Behind/Wish Someone Would Care,” where Thomas’s vocals have to be heard to be believed, singing, pleading and shouting with enough power to tear the heavens themselves apart.  Swamp Dogg and Irma Thomas crafted something special with this album; this is a re-discovery of dramatic and inspiring proportions.

L.T.G. Exchange: "Susie Heartbreaker"

An odd record, which on the cover describes itself as the score of a “black rock operetta,” although I’m not sure “Susie” and its pimped-out concept ever made it to any opera house.  The music is great, and comes through with a nice clean sound, which is at least partially due to the fact that the Exchange recorded this at Philadelphia’s storied Sigma Sound Studios.  The group’s vision is an interesting one, a blend of salsa, soul, funk and early disco that is quite intoxicating in its best moments.  Then there’s the aforementioned “operetta” aspect of the LP, which treads the usual “life is tough on the streets” theme familiar to many ‘70’s films and albums.  Key tracks are the title cut, the need-some-money strut “Stone Broke,” the Fania-meets-funk-fashioned “Dinero” and the highly acidic, sublimely tripped-out “Sky High.”  This is another wonderful, little-known musical treasure that floated just beneath the radar upon its initial distribution, now waiting for other generations to pick up on the stylized strangeness that is “Susie.”

The Fantastic Violinaires: "A Message To My Friends"

I first became aware of the Violinaires through their insanely funky classic “Groovin’ With Jesus,” something that caused me to immediately try and locate an OG copy of their identically titled Checker LP, which basically got me started on my whole gospel-funk sub-genre record obsession, a passion of mine that continues to this day.  This album finds the group five years on from their “Groovin’” days, yet their penchant for hard, unrelenting gospel-funk remains prominent, and, it being 1976, they incorporate some subtle modern soul touches into the mix.  The title track is a funk tour-de-force, starting out a bit deceptively with a major-key organ melody intro, but then quickly settling into an all-out slow-funk-gospel grind, with the lead singer (Robert Blair?) testifying himself hoarse above it all.  Wild.  Other high points are the eternally optimistic “Sunshine,” the lightly stepping “I Don’t Know What This World Is Coming To,” the ridiculously gritty, elevating, guitar-focused “He’s Alive.”  The soulful preaching The Violinaires emanate from the pulpit is enough to make a gospel-funk convert out of anybody.

The Imaginations: "The Imaginations"

Ethereal, deep-in-the-night soul at its finest.  The music is of an extremely high caliber, recorded at Chess studios in Chicago (but released on the 20^th Century label), and featuring a handful of Chicago soul notables, like Byron Gregory, Frederick Derf Walker and the ever-present Tom Tom 75 (AKA Tom Tom 84, AKA Tom Tom Washington).  The vocals by The Imaginations are exquisite, and their leads and harmonies explore a variety of topics and moods, from the political (“Talk About The World,” “Ballad Of Matheia”) to the romantic (“Because I Love You,” “God Bless You Love”) to the intensely personal (“There’s Another On Your Mind,” “Me, Myself And I,” “Searchin’”).  What I wouldn’t give to have spent ’68-’75 floating around the Chicago scene—when I hear an LP like this, it never fails to amaze me how seemingly infinite the amount of good music coming out of the city was at that time.  Better than the sheer quantity of it all, though, is the quality, and the experimental blend of instruments, songwriting and genres that fearlessly, ceaselessly created new artistic paradigms.

The J.B.'s: "Food For Thought"

Get ready for a flurry of JB posts, folks, ‘cause I’ve been on a non-stop, half-crazed JB kick for the last couple weeks, and it shows no signs of mellowing (although, James himself always said, “make it mellow!,” pronouncing it “mell-uhh!).  James Brown is kind of like Prince or P-Funk for me, in that I can be away from his music for long periods of time, but always, ALWAYS find myself coming back to it, and when I do come back, it’s all I listen to for months, sometimes whole seasons.  Of course, “Food For Thought” can’t solely be attributed to Brown, even if he wants to make sure you know he was all over it (actual album credits read, back to back, “James Brown—The Creator/Produced by James Brown/All songs arranged by James Brown…,” etc.).  No, this is the JB’s (Brown’s instrumental backing band), during the time-frame where they were primarily led by Fred Wesley, who helped to give them their distinctly jazz-informed, diamond-sharp-pocket funk sound.  As for the music, what can I really say?  You’ve heard most of these tracks before, either in the original versions or in the billion times they’ve been sampled in hip-hop.  All-time funk anthems are generously portioned throughout the LP; unforgettable, hugely impactful and influential cuts like “Pass The Peas,” “Gimme Some More,” “Hot Pants Road,” “The Grunt,” “Escape-ism.” So-called “deep tracks” are the real finds for the more embedded JB scholars, like the Latin-jazz-funk stomper “Blessed Blackness” or the hypnotic, trance-inducing “For My Brother.”  The record closes with the band’s ultimate statement of purpose, “These Are The J.B.’s,” and so when the needle hits the dead wax the listener has truly taken one of the most integral and essential funk journeys in existence, ‘cause, like Danny Ray said on the intro to their subsequent “Doing It To Death” album, “without no doubt…theeeeeese…are the J.B.’s!!!!!!!”