Out just over a month ago and consequently long overdue some MB attention, the latest instalment in Tramp Records ever excellent Movements series which unearths and curates the very rarest in vintage music of black origin is new one Movements 12. And if you cop the vinyl (why wouldn’t you?) that means four sides made up almost exclusively of super rarities running the gamut from the crooner-ish Johnny April & Mat Matthews Quartet opener She Had A Pekinese via the R&B-cum-exotica of The Hornets’ Seven Days To Tahiti and lush jazziness of Bret Breitinger’s Jive Samba to the stanky seventies funk of Energy Crisis’ Tough Times.
Of course if you know anything about MB, you’ll know it’s the funk that’s going to be of most interest round these parts and on this release that constitutes half the sum total of tracks. First up, (after a selection of crooner-isms and chilled R&B at the start of the LP) is 4 Dimensions’ Hipper Snapper, a Lickin’ Stick-style affair followed by The Villagers’ gritty (and previously unreleased) Dyke & The Blazers cover Funky Broadway. Next come two tracks perhaps more accurately described as ‘funky’ as opposed to actual funk – The Rippers’ psychedelic Honesty and Exceptional Citizens Band’s rock cover of Creedence’s Proud Mary complete with a proggy drum solo that contains some splendidly funky moments. Gus Brendel’s brisk (and brief at less than two and a half minutes!) sax-led Sax on The Rocks also lays down a heavily funky groove. Another tranche of funk comes in the fourth quarter of the compilation and is replete with wah-wah guitar and fat breaks. This begins with Onyx’s massive breaks-filled, strings-drenched rare groove classic Break It Loose and is succeeded by a real curio – Shake & Bake by The Shake & Bake Band whose members all consisted of group consisting of former NFL All-Pro players. Turns out they’re pretty good off the pitch too. Which just leaves Lou Jackson’s squelchy-wah filled Outside Looking In and Energy Crisis’ stanky Tough Times Blues.
Special mention also has to go to the aforementioned Hornets’ Seven Days To Tahiti – an absolute floor filler very loosely in the Tequila mould which is the best of of all the non-funk cuts on this though Bret Breitinger’s Jive Samba (which I’m pretty sure got sampled by something on the jazzier side of mid-90s trip-hop) runs it close. All in all, another exceptional piece of music history curation from Tramp Records and one that as usual is guaranteed to make punters move.
(Out now on Tramp Records)