Jazz-Funk / Fusion

[Greg Wilson]

Found a new home for my Jazz-Funk / Fusion mix, which I originally put together for DJ History. It can now be heard at Ducktape over in Canada (also includes accompanying info about the early 80’s Jazz-Funk scene):

http://www.ducktape.ca/bitsnbobs/gregwilson/

Tracklisting:

1. Lee Ritenour marketplace
2. Mongo Santamaria sambita
3. Dave Grusin rag bag
4. Earl Klugh amazon
5. John Klemmer brasilia
6. Paz ac/dc
7. Gilberto Gil maracatu atomico
8. David Matthews & The Electric Birds cosmic city
9. B Baker Chocolate Co snowblower
10. Richie Cole hi-fly
11. Judy Roberts never was love
12. Roy Haynes vistalite
13. Studio Trieste malaguena
14. Chuck Rainey born again
15. Dave Valentin blackbird
16. Chick Corea central park
17. Liquid Liquid push
18. Swamp Children samba zippy (pt 1)
19. Grover Washington Jnr little black samba
20. Cedar Walton latin america

[jazz_pilgrim]

Hi Greg,

Nice to see Paz in your Jazz/Funk mix. Not very often you hear that LP mentioned very often. I still it pay it pretty often. In fact I love the whole album.

I remember rushing up to London to buy that LP as soon as it had come out. It was during the days of my all-too-short career as a club DJ. There were three of us soul fans who dedided to put our music collections together and give the Soul fans of Tunbridge Wells what they were sorely lacking - a decent night of Soul Jazz and Funk music in the town. That was about the most essential purchase of the week, as far as I was concerned!

I recently managed to pick up Snowblower on some rather scratchy vinyl - but it still sounds good, nevertheless.

Another track I really used to like was Julia Roberts and Never Was Love. Think I've got it on a Jazz Juice comp somewhere ....

I shall certainly make a point of listening to your mix, Greg.

Cheers

[QUINNY]

Listening to the tracks on the mix it becomes obvious why Jazz-Funk in its purest forms never really took off. Too little Funk, way too little Jazz and NO BALLS. 25 years on, too much of it sounds like elevator music, doesn't it?

BTW: I earned the princely sum of £30 off of Paz, back in the early '90s. By then they were playing Jazz clubs on a very erratic basis and asked me to make a demo video for them when they played Southampton Jazz Club. Just the one camera and stereo pair of microphones for the sound. What else would you expect for £30.00? I still have the master tape (S-VHS, Hi-Fi stereo) in my VHS rack. Sadly, their leader and guiding light, Dick Crouch, died a few years ago.

[jazz_pilgrim]

Listening to the tracks on the mix it becomes obvious why Jazz-Funk in its purest forms never really took off. Too little Funk, way too little Jazz and NO BALLS. 25 years on, too much of it sounds like elevator music, doesn't it?

Interesting point. There is a fine line between JAZZ WITH ATTITUDE (as Gilles Peterson used to aptly name it) and the dreaded Smooth Jazz. Sadly, a lot of the so-called "Jazz Funk" coming out of the Eighties did fall into that Smooth Jazz category. And is still played on Smooth FM today.

British stuff like Julia Roberts and Paz managed to rise above that, thank goodness.

Another Britsh jazz track I liked from that period was Kalima and Trickery. A band out of Manchester I believe who recorded a Jazz EP 12" on Factory records. That is all I know about them.

Greg - I am sure you must have come acrosss this band??

[Greg Wilson]

Listening to the tracks on the mix it becomes obvious why Jazz-Funk in its purest forms never really took off. Too little Funk, way too little Jazz and NO BALLS. 25 years on, too much of it sounds like elevator music, doesn't it?

BTW: I earned the princely sum of £30 off of Paz, back in the early '90s. By then they were playing Jazz clubs on a very erratic basis and asked me to make a demo video for them when they played Southampton Jazz Club. Just the one camera and stereo pair of microphones for the sound. What else would you expect for £30.00? I still have the master tape (S-VHS, Hi-Fi stereo) in my VHS rack. Sadly, their leader and guiding light, Dick Crouch, died a few years ago.

It was definitely something of its time, in many respects a reaction against the Disco overkill post-Saturday Night Fever, but I think it's too simple to dismiss it in the way you have. The music only tells half of the story, to get the full hit you'd have had to have seen some of the brilliant fusion dancers who were on the Jazz-Funk scene back then, mainly young black kids. Looking back at it now, in isolation, the music is something perhaps best listened to on a lazy summers afternoon, rather than in a night club, but at the time it was the soundtrack to a vibrant underground scene.

The mix, regardless of what anyones personal opinion of the merits of the music might be, is reflective of the stuff that was being played in the specialist clubs back then, alongside the other forms of black dance music. By 81, and certainly 82, I felt that by enlarge, the whole Jazz-Funk thing had pretty much run its course, and was sounding very tired. As you know, I took a lot of stick from the purists for starting to play Electro on what they still regarded as the Jazz-Funk scene.

However, for a period of time it represented the cutting-edge of the black music scene in the UK, and it certainly had a subsequent influence on the whole Acid Jazz movement and DJ's like Gilles Peterson.

[Greg Wilson]

Interesting point. There is a fine line between JAZZ WITH ATTITUDE (as Gilles Peterson used to aptly name it) and the dreaded Smooth Jazz. Sadly, a lot of the so-called "Jazz Funk" coming out of the Eighties did fall into that Smooth Jazz category. And is still played on Smooth FM today.

British stuff like Julia Roberts and Paz managed to rise above that, thank goodness.

I would have thought that you'd have been into the majority of tracks in this mix at the time. I know that most of these were also played on the London scene.

Another Britsh jazz track I liked from that period was Kalima and Trickery. A band out of Manchester I believe who recorded a Jazz EP 12" on Factory records. That is all I know about them.

Greg - I am sure you must have come acrosss this band??

Yeah, some of the guys from Kalima used to come into the clubs I worked in and the keyboard player, Andy Connell (also of A Certain Ratio), worked with me on the 'UK Electro' project in '84. He later went on to become a member of Swing Out Sister.

[QUINNY]

It was definitely something of its time, in many respects a reaction against the Disco overkill post-Saturday Night Fever, but I think it's too simple to dismiss it in the way you have. The music only tells half of the story, to get the full hit you'd have had to have seen some of the brilliant fusion dancers who were on the Jazz-Funk scene back then, mainly young black kids. Looking back at it now, in isolation, the music is something perhaps best listened to on a lazy summers afternoon, rather than in a night club, but at the time it was the soundtrack to a vibrant underground scene.

The mix, regardless of what anyones personal opinion of the merits of the music might be, is reflective of the stuff that was being played in the specialist clubs back then, alongside the other forms of black dance music. By 81, and certainly 82, I felt that by enlarge, the whole Jazz-Funk thing had pretty much run its course, and was sounding very tired. As you know, I took a lot of stick from the purists for starting to play Electro on what they still regarded as the Jazz-Funk scene.

However, for a period of time it represented the cutting-edge of the black music scene in the UK, and it certainly had a subsequent influence on the whole Acid Jazz movement and DJ's like Gilles Peterson.

Greg: I can't really disagree with what you've written, but is that enough?Almost any of the scenes that came and went could boast the same thing. A few (dozen, hundred, thousand) ultra hip clubbers would have got into any scene at any one time. Generally, they would have been into it 'cos it was hip. In the end, if the music was less than danceable/lacked balls or whatever, then it follows that the scene was less than worthy of mass attention. I just wonder if the whole Jazz-Funk thing was (like soooo many genres) a false dawn, so to speak. When I listen to many of the old Jazz-Funk tracks nowadys, I kinda feel cheated. I'm still waiting for Pete Townshend of The Who to die before he gets old. Know what I mean?

[Greg Wilson]

Greg: I can't really disagree with what you've written, but is that enough?Almost any of the scenes that came and went could boast the same thing. A few (dozen, hundred, thousand) ultra hip clubbers would have got into any scene at any one time. Generally, they would have been into it 'cos it was hip. In the end, if the music was less than danceable/lacked balls or whatever, then it follows that the scene was less than worthy of mass attention. I just wonder if the whole Jazz-Funk thing was (like soooo many genres) a false dawn, so to speak. When I listen to many of the old Jazz-Funk tracks nowadys, I kinda feel cheated. I'm still waiting for Pete Townshend of The Who to die before he gets old. Know what I mean?

Yeah, there's definitely an aspect of people following what they regard as the latest 'hip' scene - one month Jazz-Funk, the next New Romantic etc. There's always that type of person. However, on the other side of this coin are the people that are genuinely passionate about the music and, as I've previously highlighted, the dancing.

When I put this mix together, I hadn't heard many of these records since back then, but, whilst I appreciate that they won't be to everyones taste, I still think they're good tracks. Peoples taste in music is, of course, very subjective and, although I have my personal views on what I like and dislike, I wouldn't be dismissive of a whole genre of music because it's not my thing - other people can obviously hear something in it that I can't. I don't think any of us has the right to believe that they have the last word when it comes to defining good music - it's all about opinion and, thankfully, variety is the spice of life.

I don't think Jazz-Funk was ever going to get mass attention, it was always an underground thing, although, at it peak, a pretty sizeable one. In one sense, it filled a gap - the people who'd been into Soul and Funk, which was what we used to regard as disco music, had seen the whole thing commercialised and, in certain cases, ridiculed, by the Travolta white suit image that had begun to obscure the black roots of the movement. The Jazz-Funk scene provided an option to this - there's always that dynamic between mainstream and underground - so, apart from anything else, it was filling a void / bridging a gap. I don't think it was a false dawn because I never expected it to take off in a big way on a mainstream level in the first place. Although the commercial clubs began to play some Jazz-Funk, it was never going to become the dominant style. Having said that, it did make its mark in lots of ways, and a number of records that had first been played on Jazz-Funk nights actually crossed over to the mainstream scene.

[buckaroo]

Peoples taste in music is, of course, very subjective and, although I have my personal views on what I like and dislike, I wouldn't be dismissive of a whole genre of music because it's not my thing - other people can obviously hear something in it that I can't. I don't think any of us has the right to believe that they have the last word when it comes to defining good music - it's all about opinion and, thankfully, variety is the spice of life.

Here here Greg. I for one am still into the Funk and Fusion I used to hear many moons ago. But I can also appreciate new stuff like Deep House, etc.

I don't think Jazz-Funk was ever going to get mass attention, it was always an underground thing, although, at it peak, a pretty sizeable one. In one sense, it filled a gap - the people who'd been into Soul and Funk, which was what we used to regard as disco music, had seen the whole thing commercialised and, in certain cases, ridiculed, by the Travolta white suit image that had begun to obscure the black roots of the movement.

I don't think it was a false dawn because I never expected it to take off in a big way on a mainstream level in the first place.

Yeah, it was a great scene, it had it's time, and along with the Soul scene, it influenced a lot of people - Londoners especially - to start up their own Funk bands. People don't realise/know/recall that groups like Light of the World, were selling over 100, 000 copies of their singles when they were released inbetween 1979 and 1980. This stuff was pretty popular! Certain people like to go on and on about the short-lived Punk Rock era, and the Sex Pistols, so why can't fans of Funk do the same about Fusion?