Various Artists - New Orleans Funk: The Original Sound Of Funk Vol. 2 (Soul Jazz Records)

This is Soul Jazz Records’ new journey into the heart of New Orleans and a guide to the city’s finest Funk music produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s.’ Featuring everyone from The Meters to Eddie Bo, Lee Dorsey to Betty Harris, this is a who’s who of the Crescent City’s most famous and most funky! The city of New Orleans has deep musical roots that stretch back to Africa. New Orleans first gave birth to Jazz music, a Black musical form centred on rhythm, improvisation, freedom and collectivity at the turn of the century. Similarly in the late 1960s New Orleans Funk came to define a unique sound, mixing Caribbean rhythms, New Orleans second-line syncopation and rhythm and blues, all played by the Big Easy’s finest musicians. 

Whilst Jazz and Funk music spread throughout the world, many African-American musical traditions remained within the city limits such as Mardi Gras and Carnival, Saturday Night Fish Fries, Funeral Marching bands and much more which partly explains why New Orleans music is so unique. The album comes with extensive sleeve-notes, exclusive photography and more, and is an essential guide to the musical landscape of New Orleans and - together with Soul Jazz Records’ earlier New Orleans’ releases - presents the definitive story of New Orleans Funk.

Although on the mainland coast, New Orleans is also surrounded by lakes giving the city an island feel. Similarly its proximity to Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti and the other West Indian Isles means that Latin and Caribbean musical influences are in its veins as much as American musical traditions. The upside of this city’s isolation is that New Orleans musical traditions flourished away from those of the rest of America. A thriving city full of artists, musicians, singers, producers, record companies, studios (well one studio actually) led to a 24-hour, 7-day a week musical life, playing in clubs, bars, brothels, carnivals and parades. The downside of the cities isolation from the rest of the US was that the city never developed a solid music industry to back up the creative over-supply. Whilst New York had Atlantic, Detroit had Motown, Memphis had Stax, Chicago had Chess, Los Angeles had Modern, New Orleans had a multitude of small businesses fighting for space - and often each other. Without the marketing, promotional weight, business nouse and financial clout, New Orleans labels found it hard to get the nationwide distribution necessary to fill the million-odd jukeboxes throughout the country. So whilst every family in America knows the music of Gladys Knight or Smokey Robinson few could tell you about – let alone hum a tune from - Benny Spellman, Inell Young, Warren Lee….

This is far from being a reflection of the artists creativity or musicality - as anyone can tell you New Orleans melodies are the catchiest of all - more it is a reflection of the limitations of the local music industry. Some New Orleans artists became successful throughout the US such as Fats Domino in the 1950s and in the late 1960s The Meters and Lee Dorsey, but many artists remained within the city limits. This makes for a fascinating goldmine of music released by a complex myriad of small labels run mainly by New Orleans producers, promoters and artists themselves. New Orleans Funk 2 brings together many of these artists along with text, sleeve-notes and photographs that gives social and historical context to the incredibly funky music of New Orleans.

----- www.souljazzrecords.co.uk

Tracklist:

1. Cyril Neville — Gossip

2. Eddie Bo — If It's Good To You (It's Good For You)

3. Ray J — Right Place Wrong Time

4. The Meters — Chicken Strut

5. Allen Toussaint — Tequila

6. The Prime Mates — Hot Tamales

7. Betty Harris — Show It

8. Lee Dorsey — Four Corners

9. Bonnie And Sheila — You Keep Me Hanging On

10. The Gaturs — Yeah You're Right, You Know You're Right

11. Danny White — The Twitch

12. Inell Young — What Do You See In Her

13. Earl King — Street Parade

14. Eddie Bo & The Soul Finders — The Rubber Band

15. Benny Spellman — Fortune Teller

16. Warren Lee — Mama Said We Can't Get Married

17. Betty Harris — 12 Red Roses

18. Joe Chopper & The Swinging 7 Soul Band — Soul Pusher

19. Eddie Bo — Hey Bo

20. Johnny Moore — Haven't I Been Good To You

21. Jimmy Hicks — I'm Mr Big Stuff

22. Warren Lee — Funky Belly

23. G. Davis And R. Tyler — Hold On Help Is On The Way

24. Art Neville — Bo Diddley

25. Porgy Jones — Dap

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Marvellous Boy - Calypso From West Africa (1950's - 1960's)

Another compilation from the Honest Jon's record label, this calypso compilation is interesting insofar as it incorporates numerous aspects of different styles of West African music be they highlife legends such as Rex Lawson, or various gems in the Afro-Cuban jazz style. It's definitely worth checking out for anyone interested the origins, emergence and popularisation of African rooted genres in Western culture as they exist today.

From the Honest Jon's website:

The inter-war dance bands of British West Africa are often strikingly similar in sound to Trinidadian orchestras like Lovey's String Band (credited with the first calypso recordings, in 1912). However, the first West African calypso recordings in the modern style are from Freetown, Sierra Leone in the early 1950s, by Ebenezer Calendar and Famous Scrubbs. In arrangements blending African and European instruments, the brass plays out the legacy of colonial military bands, albeit hair-down and a little ramshackle now; and the beautiful creole lyrics are as upful, quick, current, musical and intimate as any classic calypsonian's.

Decca also organized the first calypso recording session in Ghana, down the coast, where a sound interchangeably designated 'calypso' or 'highlife' ruled urban dancefloors, courtesy of The Tempos — fronted here by Julie Okine — and its spin-offs The Black Beats, The Red Spots, and finally The Rhythm Aces.
The invasion of King Mensah of Ghana, and The Tempos' money-spinning tour of Nigeria at the start of the 1950s sparked a decade of musical innovation. Bobby Benson’s new highlife eleven-piece included the great trumpeters Victor Olaiya and Roy Chicago — both leaving to lead the bands featured here, the Cool Cats and Rhythm Dandies — and his calypso Taxi Driver was their first, huge, signature hit. (By contrast, little is known about the Nigerian Rolling Stone, whose real name was Roland Onaghise, singing here in the Bini dialect with such rootical frankness.) 

The Mayor's Dance Band was the second lineup run by the celebrated Erekosima 'Rex' Lawson, after the Nigeraphone Studio Orchestra Of Onitsha, and highly successful throughout the 1960s. With Lawson's trademark blend of Igbo lyrics over a Calabari rhythm, reflecting his mixed parentage, and his superb, Caribbean-flavoured trumpet-playing, Bere Bote is the latest of the recordings here.
Like Lawson, Steven Amechi was from eastern Nigeria — the guitar solo on Nylon Dress is by the king of Igbo highlife, Stephen Osita Osadebe. 

The Tempos' drummer Guy Warren once recalled a trip to London, where he'd played in Kenny Graham's pioneering Afro Cubists: 'When I was in London I went to the Caribbean Club somewhere near Piccadilly, the haunt of a lot of West Indians. It was all calypso every night... When I came back I brought some of these records and we learnt to play them as I knew straightaway that these musical inflections were so highlifish.' And most likely he would have thrown in some of Ambrose Campbell's London recordings of calypso highlife with the West African Rhythm Brothers, including horn players from the Caribbean — at that time making an epochal impact back home in Nigeria. 

And saxophonist Chris Ajilo was likewise deeply impressed by the Afro Cubists, forming his band The Cubanos on his return to Lagos in 1955, after studying at the London School Of Music. (Baba Ani, aka Lekan Animashaun — stalwart of Fela Kuti's music, from the Koola Lobitos to Egypt 80 — was in later lineups.) A tribal 'woro', 'fire dance', from Egun country, obviously Ariwo isn't highlife-calypso, it's cooking afro-cuban jazz with traditional roots; but it exemplifies the open hybridity of all these forms, and the receptivity of their West African milieu to inspiration abroad, as throughout the 1950s West African musicians like King Bruce of The Rhythm Aces, the Sierra Leonean calypsonian Ali Ganda, E.T. Mensah and Zeal Onyia all checked out London's burgeoning West Indian and West African scenes.

 
By the early 1960s, calypso was fading in West Africa. US soul and rhythm and blues were poised to replace Caribbean influences, even as there was also a turn towards more traditional, local, African musical material. Still, the dying embers would produce its most classical exponent, Godwin Omabuwa, Nigeria's own Lord Kitchener, ebulliently singing here about a famous victory of the middleweight Dick Tiger. Another graduate of Bobby Benson's orchestras, his band the Casanova Dandies at this time included the jazz modernist Mike Falana, on the eve of his departure for London, where he would join Peter King's African Jazz Messengers. In the face of changing tastes, Omabuwa cut only a few records, and his live audience was steeply reduced to prostitutes and their customers in a Lagos Island dive, but his mastery of the genre was a fitting end to the heyday of calypso in British West Africa.

'endlessly satisfying' (Boston Phoenix)

'Blending cheeky calypso with rocking highlife — and by turns breezy, wistful and downright uproarious' (Daily Telegraph) 

'gems at every turn... weaving highlife, swing, military brass bands, Afro-Cuban jazz, into a hell of a compilation... Honest Jon's have added to the highest order of this simple music of heartbreaking celebration' (Brainwashed)

Tracklist:

01. Famous Scrubbs - Poor Freetown Boy
02. Bobby Benson And His Combo - Taxi Driver (I Don't Care)
03. Chris Ajilo And His Cubanos - Ariwo
04. Roy Chicago - Olubunmi
05. Mayor's Dance Band - Bere Bote
06. Steven Amechi And His Empire Rhythm Skies - Nylon Dress
07. Ebenezer Calender And His Maringer Band - Fire Fire Fire
08. Famous Scrubbbs - Scrubbs Na Marvellous Boy
09. Godwin Omabuwa And His Sound Makers - Dick Tiger's Victory
10. Rolling Stone And His Traditional Aces - Igha Suo Gamwen
11. E.T. Mensah And His Tempos Band - The Tree And The Monkey
12. Bobby Benson And His Jam Session Orchestra - Calypso Minor One
13. Ebenezer Calender And His Maringer Band - Cost Of Living Nar Freetown
14. Ebenezer Calender And His Maringer Band - Me Nar Poor Old Man Nor Do Me So
15. Bobby Benson And His Combo - Gentleman Bobby
16. Victor Olaiya - Yabomisa Sawale
17. The Rhythm Aces - Mami
18. Ebenezer Calender And His Maringer Band - Arria Baby

Download Link - Mediafire

New Orleans Funk: The Original Sound of Funk 1960-75 (Soul Jazz Records)

This collection of New Orleans Funk features acknowledged masters next to some of the earlier artists who shaped the meaning of funk. The album is also filled with many rare, sought after and undiscovered funk tracks. It covers the period from the emergence of New Orleans Funk in the early 1960's through to the mid-seventies. The record is a great addition to the music collection of anyone in any way interested in Funk. It has some vital ingredients in it that you can't find elsewhere.

With the sound of the New Orleans Funeral March Bands, Mardi Gras Indian Tribes and Saturday Night Fish Fries all as inspiration New Orleans Funk developed into a unique sound. New Orleans is a port town. Originally owned by the French, this was where many slaves were brought from the West Indies. Many of these slaves came from Haiti and brought with them the religion of Voodoo and its drums and music. It became one of the first parts of America to develop a strong African-American culture leading to the invention of Jazz in the early 1900s. 

A main feature of Jazz in New Orleans were the Jazz Funeral Marching bands. Solemn Brass bands accompanying a coffin would, on burial, be joined by a second line of drummers and dancers which would turn the event into a celebration of the spirit cutting free from earth. This African tradition is strong in New Orleans and still goes on to this day. The backline drums play a syncopated style that is neither on the beat nor the off-beat. These rhythms are what forms the basis of New Orleans Funk.

Tracklist:

1. The Meters - Handclapping Song
2. The Explosions - Hip Drop
3. Lee Dorsey - Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further
4. Gentleman June Gardner - It's Gonna Rain
5. Eddie Bo - Check your Bucket
6. Professor Longhair - Big Chief
7. Huey 'Piano' Smith & His Clowns - Free, Single and Disengaged
8. Chuck Carbo - Can I Be your Squeeze
9. Aaron Neville - Hercules
10. Mary Jane Hooper - I've Got Reasons
11. The Gaturs - Gator Bait
12. Allen Toussaint - Get Out of my Life Woman
13. Cyril Neville - Tell Me What's On Your Mind
14. Bo Dollis & The Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indian Band - Handa Wanda
15. Lee Dorsey and Betty Harris - Love Lots of Lovin
16. The Explosions - Garden of Four Trees
17. Ernie & The Top Notes - Dap Walk
18. The Meters - Just Kissed my Baby
19. Marilyn Barbarin - Reborn
20. Dr John - Mama Roux
21. Danny White - Natural Soul Brother
22. Eddie Bo - Hook 'n' Sling (Part II)
23. Ernie K. Doe - Here Come the Girls
24. Robert Parker - Hip-Huggin

Download Link - Mediafire