SISTER FUNK 2 - Various - 2007 - Album review

SISTER FUNK 2 – Various – 2007 – Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Honey & The Bees (Love Addict) - Sandy Gaye (Watch The Dog…) - Althea Spencer (Take Me Baby) - Barbara Mason (You Better Stop It)
SOUNDBITE: “Watch the dog!”
RATING: Overall 5/5 – The Sandy Gaye track 10/5 (don’t worry - that’ll make sense when you hear it.)
It must be the Devil’s own job by now to come up with a collection of classic funky soul female vocal 45s that somebody hasn’t already compiled a million times – probably with a title containing words like ‘sister’ and ‘funk’. Ian Wright (the DJ one) should know as it’s taken him seven years to compile this sequel to Sister Funk - time you have to hope he spent digging the crates rather than working on what to call it. The thing is, with the million other such compilations out there, you’d need a good reason to buy this one. Still, the series isn’t subtitled The Sound of the Unknown Soul Sisters for nothing and you’d be hard-pressed to find these twenty funky little puppies any other way than on this album. But by far the greatest reason to make you part with money is two short words. ‘Sandy’ and ‘Gaye’. If her Watch The Dog That Bring The Bone doesn’t actually make some sort of bone appear when you hear it (even if you’re female) then you better be checking you’ve still got a pulse. I paid fifteen quid for the album on the basis of this one track and there’s no way you’d get it for that on E-bay even if you could find it on there. Which you won’t. My mate still laughed at me when I told him this – but that was fine, because I enjoyed his slack jawed amazement when he first heard it. If there’s a more massive slice of southern funky-ass soul – I think I should be told. The bass line on this is the shit – it’s the mother of all the biggest funky soul basslines you’ve ever heard, tweaked by angels, triple-tracked by God and then jacked by the Devil (obviously), over which perfect horns, wah-wah guitar and solid up-tempo percussion battle to match Sandy Gaye belting lyrics out with so much abandon it’s like she doesn’t care if her vocal chords ever recover. And the rest of it? Well (notwithstanding the fact that the Sandy Gaye track is in the first ten) I prefer the latter half of the LP – though that’s still a good ten tracks. Honourable mentions in the first half do have to go to Honey & The Bees’ dancefloor belter Love Addict and Barbara Trent’s shuffling speed-soul take on the King’s Heartbreak Hotel. Unfortunately several of the tracks (the Rhetta Hughes and Big Ella ones particularly) start off like corkers but then the tunes take a nosedive into the sort of non-bluesey chord progressions I associate more with Northern Soul – a bit like drinking a glass of the finest Belgian beer that becomes Fosters without warning on the second mouthful. Nevertheless, the second half of the LP veers from bombs like the fast funky soul of Althea Spencer’s Take Me Baby to the Latin influences of Cheryl Johnson’s It’s not too late, slightly psychedelic numbers like The Fabulettes Muddy Waters and even some disco-fever in the shape of Vivian Lee and Florence Trapp. This isn’t the quite the greatest compilation of funky female vocals ever compiled (currently I’d give that accolade to the concisely titled I’m A Good Woman Vol. 3: Funk Classics From Sassy Soul Sisters) but a true connoisseur seeks out the more esoteric classics as well as the obvious ones and Sister Funk 2 is the motherlode of funky-soul esoterica. Oh yeah – and don’t forget that ignoring Sandy Gaye would be an unspeakable act of treason to the funk. Don’t take my word for it – click the link below and improve your life!
Listen to Sister Funk 2