NEW ORLEANS FUNK & SOUL Vol. 2 – 2008 – Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Tricky. This is utter quality throughout!
SOUNDBITE: “We play it real funky/ C’mon now, we play it real funky”
RATING: 5/5
Carlsberg don’t make funk and soul compilation albums and even if they did Soul Jazz would still make them look like rank amateurs who should stick to purveying crap lager. Calling this Vol. 2 is a bit of an odd choice of name though, as they brought out the excellent Saturday Night Fish Fry just after Vol. 1 about eight years ago and this was itself effectively a second volume of New Orleans funk and soul - mainly because it consisted entirely of more New Orleans funk and soul. Not that I’m complaining about this third helping you understand. If you haven’t already picked up Soul Jazz’s previous efforts at compiling the funky heritage of New Orleans and you like this LP then I reckon you might find yourself parting with quite a lot of money. If you did catch the first two then you’ll know what to expect and will definitely want this - the formula is pretty much the same and of equal high quality with a lot of the same artists making another appearance. As with the others you’ve got a couple of Meters tracks (of course!) instrumental Chicken Strut and the Cyril Neville vocal bomb Gossip. Lee Dorsey, Eddie Bo, Betty Harris and Allen Toussaint all make it on too. Then there are the lesser known gems. Jimmy Hicks’ ultra funky cocksure strut I’m Mr Big Stuff is a cover of and riposte to the famous Jean Knight track and my personal favourite on the whole thing. Benny Spellman’s Fortune Teller was penned by New Orleans funky linchpin Allen Toussaint and it’s breakneck breakbeat eerily prefigures Gnarls Barkley’s Run. Then there’s Soul Pusher by Joe Chopper And The Swinging 7 Soul Band – the identities of whom nobody is actually sure about – was this a nom-de-plume for The Gaturs or just a talented New Orleans covers band? This album pretty much runs the entire spectrum of funk and soul - instrumentals, soul brother vocals, soul sister vocals, lazy grooves, hectic breaks, rockier and more psychedelic edged numbers, latin tinged numbers, pre-historic dusty grooves from the mid-sixties and cleaner later-period seventies efforts. To run through them all here serves little purpose – if you’re at all interested in funk and soul this is both an essential purchase and - at the risk of sounding like a pseud - a bit of a musical journey...and every good journey involves some exploration. Enjoy.
Out now.
RELATED LINKS
Listen to New Orleans Funk Vol. 2
Soul Jazz - Myspace
souljazzrecords.co.uk
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