The Fifty Funkiest Albums Ever Mad

Okay, I'm done with this list.

GET A LIFE MAKE A RECORD WRITE A BOOK OK THX

Has anyone else reached a tearing your hair out point with these?

*sob*

long, long, long ago.

But the guy made a good enough one. It's the usual make-a-point exercise. "King Harvest" is not one that one would put in a top 50, maybe, but it is a funky record, I guess. Has no one sampled this? I dunno, sure, any Meters tune is funky--I'd pick something off their first couple albums, the Josie stuff, over "Just Kissed My Baby," just 'cause they're better when they don't sing...

"Weird to pick Papa's Got a Brand New Bag as the JB tune with "no antecedents" and "virtually dispensing with melody and structure", since it's basically a blues with a straight beat."

Right, it is a blues. The way it's played, though, is, if not "without antecedents," new in the sense that it's tightened up, which is what makes funk funk. That whole Jimmy Nolen chanking guitar stuff. I read this great quote from Earl King, it's in John Broven's book on New Orleans rhythm-and-blues, where Earl King talks about how guitar players and drummers did just that, tightened up, made the beat stiff, and he puts it so well--"it emanated out into the world," which I love, it emanated. Anyway, I think "Out of Sight" is maybe a year or so before "Brand New Bag," and it's getting there in terms of what you call funk. In my opinion, the way that those jam-band drummers play is comical, when they think they're playing funk music, because they're so floppy when they need to be tight. I think the word "ropey" should be used more to describe this kind of thing.

I like this kind of music a lot, and wouldn't venture to say what is the most funky, since there are a million cool funk tunes and a whole lot of great funk bands. For my taste, I think the person who made this list agrees with me, anyway, by saying Sly's "In Time" is #1. I listen to "Riot" and "Fresh" all the time and I think they're records where *everything* is funky, tightened up, not quite the way anyone else would phrase it, from vocals to drums to bass, everything. There may be records done in this vein that are as good, everyone has their favorites, but I always admire the eccentricity mixed with the control that Sly exhibits on them. Like on "Time," that's just an incredible vocal that I can't imagine anyone else in the world improving on, and it's just basically a 12/8 gospel tune.

Miles Davis agreed! Several of his early 70s sidemen report that he was obsessed w/this song, compelling everyone to listen over & over.

"Jump to It" is great, very underated Aretha, but not strictly funky like say "Rock Steady." Overall there were some good calls here, "Funky Sensation" by Gwen McRae is another 1981 street classic. But I found the attempts at Stairway to Hell type contrarian perversity a bit labored. Chuck can pull it off, but...

48.
Metallica: 'Sad But True'

...and I just couldn't go on.

Maybe I'm missing the definition of "tighten up," but I'd say there's a hell of a lot more difference to "Papa" than the way it's played. It's an entirely different beat. (I don't see how it's "straight" by early-'60s standards, either, Jordan.) Even "Out of Sight" sounds different, though the backbeat gets less emphasis, making its difference less obvious.

To my ears, funk is rhythmic tendency more than a musical style, which is why it's cool this list includes Metallica and Led Zep, though I don't think the Metallica song swings much. I actually think U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)" did much more to bring funk beats back into mainstream rock.

Care to elaborate? I don't hear anything that hadn't been done before on earlier rock n' roll & soul records. Straight 8ths, snare on 2 & 4, 12 bar blues.

I'm listening to "Brand New Bag" right now, since I haven't heard the long slower version on the box in a while, and I've been trying to learn how to play funk basslines the right way, along with my so far fumble-fingered attempts to play New Orleans-style piano (the turnarounds are tough, I get the concept but I got to work on my fingering...).

Anyway, the thing I hear is the guitar playing on 2 and 4, and the bass filling in on and of 2, 3, and of 3...the thing I find different is the tightening of the beat, you got to count it clipped or it doesn't work. And the drumming is different from what you find in a lot of r&b of the period, it's actually very light and almost Latin, except the drums aren't doing anything like a clave (that's where that bass thing comes in, the classic use of bass in funk where you have this space, which isn't exactly clave in its real form but which is definitely derived from it). "I Feel Good" is much the same--the drumming is, again, light, except in the middle part where the sax figure happens, you can really hear the contrast between the two ways of playing, which is the beauty of the composition...and toward the end, the drums are playing a bit heavier, more on the two and four...it swings, it's beautiful...genius.

xpost

I think I understood about half what you said. Is a clave a Latin beat? Sorry for my ignorance of these terms, guys.

Jordan, you're right that the 12-bar structure of it is not new, and I guess neither are the straight eighths (you mean the fact that it's not swinging, or shuffling, or whatever you call it?).

What's weird to me is what the bass drum, and the bass, are doing, in combination with the beat always coming back to that hard ONE. I think that's what Edd is describing. Maybe it really is a question of emphasis and how the musicians are playing it, but it sounds different to me than the New Orleans-style backbeat of the time.

And yeah, I'm learning how to play Longhair, and Toussaint-style. Longhair is ornamented like crazy, the left hand takes some work. I got this Dr. John CD/book that takes you from Texas-style boogie, straight eights, thru the more complex stuff. I have mastered the kind of licks you hear on, say, Kenner's "I Like It Like That." It's fun.

Clave is a breaking up of musical ideas, into groups of two and three, with a break (clave) between the two groups, so the rhythm is sprung out. It's the basis for almost all Latin music, the organizing principle. I'm real interested in this stuff. Because as Ned Sublette points out in his recent book on "Cuba and Its Music," early rock and roll, in New Orleans and elsewhere, picked up on this to create the standard kind of stop-start bass parts you hear in so much of the stuff happening in the '50s. You know, da-da-da (break) da-da...or in James Brown's bass lines, or funk bass in general, which fills in the gaps between the two and four, usually. The deeper I get into this stuff, the more I realize I know nothing.