Funk Is The Thing
A groove is never the same thing as a rut, no matter what the dictionary might tell you. It can never be, not in my world. A groove is funky, a step just far enough outside the ordinary to feel good, to feel both outside yourself and outside the rest of the world in the best possible way. Rolling alone, your body making music. In a rut you sink down far enough that you can barely hear the music anymore, and you start to lose the sense that you're even a part of, or visible to, the rest of the world. Apart, rather than a part. A groove is funky. A rut is a funk. Funk's only negative connotation is when it's preceded by that "a," and followed by a period, or, in unusual cases, I suppose, by some other punctuation mark. Virtually any other way that "funk" could be used or permuted, at least by me, would be a positive indicator regarding the topic or topics under discussion.
My notions of "funk" or "funky" are ridiculously broad. To this day I've never heard a definition of "funk" as I understand it that gives me any kind of pleasure. It's not just James Brown, but where James Brown comes from. It's the music of my bones, and my understanding of it stems from the discovery of a thread, a connection, a common bond between all sorts of otherwise seemingly unrelated music. And that common bond is something intangible, something about the way the music stirred things up in my head and sent mysteries and unexpected directives roaring through my blood. Other music gave --and gives-- me pleasure. Other music could make me dance. But no other music gives me funk pleasure. You can talk about "the one," the churning rhythms, the scratch guitar, whatever, but funk is one of those things I know on a purely sub-head level. So, sure, James Brown is funk, and he may well have virtually invented the music that most people consider "funk." But he didn't happen in a vacuum, and funk was out there before "Out of Sight" or "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag." Sun Ra at his skankiest is decidedly funky, and much of his best music I would characterize as straight funk. The Minutemen were a funk band in ways that the Red Hot Chili Peppers could never dream of. Pere Ubu was a funky band. Much of the African music I love, and most Afro-Pop is straight funk. Art Ensemble of Chicago? Funky. Funk. Ditto for a lot of the jazz I love: Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, late-period Miles, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Horace Silver, Larry Young, and Herbie Hancock. Grant Green was funky. Wes Montgomery, much as I love him, did not have a funky bone in his body. The Meters, of course, were a funk band. Gang of Four were funky. The Roots can be a funk band whenever they want; they know funk. Some of the old Harry Smith mountain loonies were plenty funky. So is Marion Williams, and so is Boz Fucking Scaggs.
I've spent more time than I really care to admit trying to find the ultimate source of funk music, the well that James Brown drank from, and in the process I have accumulated literally hundreds of regional funk 45s. But discographical information is hard to come by for a lot of these records, including such basic information as dates and personnel. I've determined that I'm never going to find the Holy Grail, and in the process my own definition has only gotten broader all the time. I do know, though, that there is a clear distinction between funk and soul, and funk and disco, and funk and lots of other things that I know in my gut are not funk. And I also feel pretty strongly that a lot of the stuff that gets marketed as products of the golden age of funk doesn't personally do anything to get the juices jangling in me the way the real deal does. I'm thinking here of anything much from the late '70s on. Synthesized keyboards ruined funk just as surely as they ruined African pop. That's just my opinion, but after a certain point --when you get to later P-Funk, the Brothers Johnson, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Commodores, etc.-- you have a bunch of guys who are doing their damnedest to dress the part while essentially ploughing a field that somebody else planted. The music became all groove-trance and bottom, and paved the way for all sorts of great stuff that came later. But it still wasn't funk, at least not in my book. For the real deal you have to dig deeper; you have to be willing to go beyond "Star Time" and George Clinton, to the mostly anonymous bands who were churning out funk all over the country, usually without the benefits of major labels or national distribution. Here's a brief primer:
The Unknown, Pad Out. O A Records, Dallas.
Louis Chachere, The Hen. MJC Records.
Herb Johnson Settlement, Damph F'Ain't. Tox San Records.
LeRoy and The Drivers, The Sad Chicken. Duo Records.
Frank Penn, Gimme Some Skin. Penn's Records.
Tommy Bush, Skin It Back. Cal State Records.
Brother Soul, Cookies. Leo Mini Records.
The Illusions, Funky Donkey. Showtime.
Eugene Blacknell, Gettin' Down. Seaside Records.
The Mohawks, The Champ. Sir J.J. Records.
James Polk and the Brothers, Just Plain Funk. Twink.
Prepositions, Funky Disposition. Movement Records.
Salt, Hung Up. Choctaw Records.
Uncle Sam, The Big Apple. Le Cam.
Robert Lowe, Put Your Legs Up High. Eastbound.
Spittin' Image, J.B.'s Latin. Masai Record Company.
Granby Street Development, Jelly Roll. New Faces '69.
Reggie Sadler Revue, Raggedy Bag. Aquarius.
Bad Medicine, Trespasser, Pt. 2, Enyx Records.
Thunder and Lightning, Bumpin' Bus Stop. Private Stock.
Brother Byron, Booty Whip. Alma Lee.
The Stereos Combo, Stereo Freeze, Pt. 1. Hyde Records.
Soul Vibrations, The Dump. Vibrant.
Arthur Jackson, Philosophy of Chopp Funk. A.J.'s Records.
Fabulous Caprices, Groovy World. Camaro.
Soul Tornadoes, Hot Pants Breakdown. Magic City.
Lunar Funk, Slip the Drummer One. Flashback.
Al Brown, The Whip, Pt. 1. BM Records.
6:50:07 PM 
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