Rare Groove ?

[Bastian78]

What is 'rare groove' ? Can someone explain me a bit.

Which acts are associated well with this style ?

thank you

[Forrrce]

The term originally appeared in the middle '80s. It was borne out of the warehouse/underground club scene (and the advent of London's hugely influential Kiss FM pirate station) and the emphasis was mainly on obscure funk 7"s, though the term encapsulated anything up to records that were only 2 years old.

Kiss's role was pivotal, as several DJs and record collectors got together to play (mainly older) obscure records which had passed many by. DJs like Norman Jay, Eddie 'Greenie' Greenaway and Desi 'D' were the first to use the term, if I recall correctly. Funk DJs like Jonathan 'Coldcut' More, Jay Strongman and Kerstan 'The Funky Fly' Mackness mainly represented the funk element - the former concentrated mainly on soul, funk and disco.

It was an interesting time which would change the world of music, pretty subtly. The rare groove scene gave us the Brand New Heavies, who managed to sell formulaic '70s grooves back to America; and in turn reawaken a lost pride in '70s music. I knew a lot of people who went to the 'States to buy records and shops & dealers just couldn't wait to give the things away. 'We're not interested in that old crap', they used to say. My favourite record shop at that time used to organise regular 'Stateside buying trips - the records they found in quantity were phenomenal. The rare groove scene here revived James Brown and The JBs' careers. Everyone wanted Lyn Collins, Marva Whitney, Bobby Byrd, Bill Doggett, etc. records and America still had bucketloads of these items in bins everywhere, it seemed.

Many early '80s records proved very hard to find in only a few months or a couple of years - cue Roy Ayers, Don Blackmon, Hipnotic, Rome Jefferies, Jagg, Curtis Hairston, Terry Callier, Gary Bartz - so many artists and tracks notorious for their rarity, or were just plain influential, stem from the rare groove scene.

Just a few examples of big 'rare groove' cuts in the middle-'80s:

'80s Ladies 'Turned On To You' '81 12" - a huge UK favourite from day one, mysteriously never released here at the time. It came to symbolise 'rare groove'.
Gwen McCrae 'All This Love That I'm Givin'' '79 LP - absolutely massive revival cut
James Mason 'Rhythm Of Life' '76 LP
JBs (all LPs)
Roy Ayers (early to mid-'70s LPs)
Don Blackman '82 LP
Weldon Irvine - most LPs
John Gibbs 'Trinidad' '77 12"
Universal Robot Band 'Barely Breaking Even' '82 12"
(Tommy) McGhee 'Now That I Have You' '82 7"/'84 12"
Leon Ware '82 LP (incl. 'Why I came To California')
Hipnotic 'Are You Lonely' '83 12"
Whatnauts 'Help Is On The Way' '81 12"
Active Force '83 LP
Gary Bartz 'Music Is My Sanctuary' '76 LP
Rene & Angela 'Wall To Wall' '81 LP
Wornell Jones '78 LP
Mighty Ryders '78 LP
Mickey & The Soul Generation 'Iron Leg' 7"
Tommy Stewart '76 LP
Vibrettes 'Humpty Dump' 7"
Steve Parks 'Moving In The Right Direction' 1981 LP
Sylvia Striplin 'You Can't Turn Me Away' '80 12"/LP
Marlena Shaw 'Go Away, Little Boy' '76 7"/12"/LP
Logg '81 LP
B.B.C.S. & A. 'Rock Shock' '82 12"
Clyde Alexander & Sanction 'Got To Get Your Love' '79 12"
The Younger Generation 'We Rap More Mellow' '79 12"
Rome Jefferies 'Good Love' '83 12"
Clausel 'Let Me Love You' '83 12"
Hi Tension 'There's A Reason' '79 12"
Leroy Hutson 'Paradise' '82 LP (and pretty much most of his catalogue)
Stairsteps '2nd Resurrection' '76 LP
Sheree Brown 'It's A Pleasure' '82 12"/LP
The Naturals 'Funky Rasta' '82 12"

There really is so much more. Most of the titles here have been overplayed, even for those who weren't around then - but there was a time when these records and many like them were incredibly popular and pretty difficult to obtain.

It quickly became more about the obscurity of the records to a lot of hangers-on, but the quality of much of the music was still high and pretty relevant - as you can see, a lot of the titles listed above were not that old when they became sought after.

[Bernie]

Forrrce,

Thanks for that nice explanation of rare groove and the examples. Learn something new everyday!

[QUINNY]

Forrrce: In your wisdom, would you say the Rare Groove scene concentrated on records that were something less than premier league. I know I'm as guilty as the next in 'bigging up' certain favourite records, but in my defense, the records worked with average, non-hip audiences, so I can only infer that they did have some merit. Do you think there was an analogy with the Northern Soul scene in some respects, in so much as both were started for the right reasons, but were eventually taken over by greed and a record's rarity meaning more than what was in the grooves, which lead to an ever increasing mediocrity? Did the jocks cover up labels as in the NS days and were there lotsa bootlegs made by a few unscrupulous dealers?

[Forrrce]

Forrrce: In your wisdom, would you say the Rare Groove scene concentrated on records that were something less than premier league. I know I'm as guilty as the next in 'bigging up' certain favourite records, but in my defense, the records worked with average, non-hip audiences, so I can only infer that they did have some merit. Do you think there was an analogy with the Northern Soul scene in some respects, in so much as both were started for the right reasons, but were eventually taken over by greed and a record's rarity meaning more than what was in the grooves, which lead to an ever increasing mediocrity? Did the jocks cover up labels as in the NS days and were there lotsa bootlegs made by a few unscrupulous dealers?

The scene?
The whole experience went sour pretty quickly. It was a genuinely exciting time initially, because most of the gems being unearthed were simply extensions of what the target audience was into - it's easier to break say, unknown Roy Ayers tracks to existing Roy Ayers fans, right? Of course, prices shot up overnight and some of the trickier items were bootlegged. Rare groove soon became a 'sound' - more or less anything '70s sounding with a wah-wah was referred to as a 'rare groove'. The middle and upper classes got in on the act (those Henriettas love living dangerously!). Remember the SAW 'Roadblock' scam? I can't believe anyone 'credible' fell for it, but it worked. When the country's biggest pop hit-making machine get wind of the underground, then emulate it and fool its patrons in the process, you know it's all over!


The records?
Sheer obscurity (not quite as synonymous with mediocrity as it is today - people weren't quite so easy to fool then) over quality was a little way off.


Now?
If the '80s Ladies, Gwen McCrae, Lyn Collins & The Jackson Sisters cuts were the grandmamas of the scene, then its grandfather must surely be 'Cross The Track (We Gotta Go Back)' by Maceo & The Macks. Currently being used for TV adverts, along with the Meters, Frank Wilson and whatever else you like. The rare groove generation have grown up and are now running things.
By the way, can't remember much about cover-ups, but bootlegs certainly paid for a few BMWs - and more.

[QUINNY]

Forrrce: Thanks for the info. Was rare groove a London thing primarily and then only certain manors?

To be honest, the whole rare groove scene completely passed me by.

Roadblock - quite a credible record 17 years on and in the cold light of day. I can imagine how hot and bothered some folks must have got over it. SAW were clever guys, weren't they?

[Mixmachine]

I learned something new also, I had no idea that 'Rare Grooves' was referring to a specific music classification anywhere; In the mid 80's in my area clubbers could care less about 70's music, remember mixing once Collins' "Think" with that early rap hit "It takes two" that sampled it and the floor fell flat, no one even knew of the original song.

Was vinyl in the mid 80's rare in UK already? Cause in the mid-80s vinyl was available every where still in the US, very few people had switched to cd yet.

[QUINNY]

Mixmachine: Vinyl wasn't rare at all. Rare Groove pertains to the records that were unearthed and the scene that built up around that. It was these guys' way of gaining credence by playing something different and less commercial than the current club scene at the time. It was, so far as I know, both esoteric, eclectic, eccentric in parts and of course totally hip ( for a while at least) and therefore looked upon with great disdain and apprehension by the rest of us.
In other words, no different to previous niches.

[Mixmachine]

Mixmachine: Vinyl wasn't rare at all. Rare Groove pertains to the records that were unearthed and the scene that built up around that. .

yes, I understood that, but Forrce mentions vinyl hunting trips to the US like if vinyl was not available in the UK in the mid 80's. I guess he means Albums not released there, but I know shops here were not giving away vinyl until much later in the 80's.

[Forrrce]

Quinny, I would say the scene was a London one primarily, because a lot of the key records had a very 'London' sound. Most of the songs listed above are at, or just above medium-tempo and essentially bass-driven - this has more to do with the black, inner-city sound, essentially moulded by a strong Caribbean/reggage influence. What was then christened 'two-step' - mid-tempo, tuneful soul numbers, was a big part of the initial gold rush. This was, perhaps, the more 'street' element of the scene and one which wasn't too fussed with the funkier/jazzier/discofied elements of rare groove.The voyage of discovery was a great one - imagine tuning in to radio stations and hearing quality, unknown oldies all day. Kiss FM had a stronger oldies policy than previous previous of its ilk. They were great, eye-and-ear opening times for me and many others, even though it became uber-fashionable (thus tiresome) overnight. And once this little, un-named scene got branded - and its own dress code, it was time to jump ship. I never called myself a rare-groover, by the way. Even then, I thought it was somehow commodicising this great mix of music, in a give-with-one-hand-and-take-with-the-other kind of way.



Mixmachine, if you check the records I listed, all but one of them is American by origin. With the exception of some of the James Brown/JBs titles, Sheree Brown, Rene & Angela, Stairsteps & Hi-Tension, none of the above had been released in the UK, pre-rare groove - and all but nine have been released in the UK in some form or other since then, directly through the interest and demand the scene generated. They would only have been available as imports when they were initally released (if at all in the UK) and owned by a privileged few. There were a handful of (mainly northern soul) record dealers who made regular 'Stateside buying trips, looking for indemand club titles since, at least, the early '70s (probably the most successful was John Anderson of Soul Bowl in Suffolk, who has been supplying northern, funk and soul collectors by mail for at least 30 years, I believe. Nice guy, too).

Vinyl in general hasn't been rare in the UK in my lifetime, but certain titles always have been. You wanted rare American records? You went to America. In the heat of the mania, a collector (now A&R man) called Steve Jervier put his money where his mouth was and opened two London shops in the space of a couple of years, stocked entirely with sought-after vinyl he'd acquired on buying trips to America. To do so now would be almost impossible - you'd have to pay eBay 'panic' prices and rely on trades to have a similar concern going. This is what I mean when I say it was all there for the taking. The Americans got wise after a while and started to want their records back. Like it or hate it, I seriously think rare groove changed the music world, more than just a little bit.


Quinny (again), how could you have viewed the scene with disdain as it passed you by???

[SandraDee]

I think Quinny's got a time machine which he uses to go back & decide whether he likes a particular music or not (it's invariably a resounding 'not' because it's too disco-ey :-? ). I hear he's going to be the new Dr.Who. Take care not to get that scarf trapped in the door of your Tardis sweety. :o

[DISCODISK]

STEELY since you mention dr who a catchfrase from that series springs to mind E--------- ! :lol: but i wont type it as hes amused me today with his thoughts hes just the last remaining english eccentric right

[Forrrce]

I believe Quinny's just out of shot, somewhere to the lower left...

[SandraDee]

Oh Forrrce, that image has really made my night! I always knew the darleks were under-rated & misunderstood. :lol:

[Mixmachine]

Forrce, Thanks for extra information , very interesting history I never knew at all, thiis UK 'Rare Groove" scene/movement must be unique in music history, it is amasing that all this attention revolved around old american soul recordings, here most people don't even remember (or care) recording/artist from the past (except the old tired top 40 list).

[QUINNY]

DD: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: You are so tiresome.
Steely: ditto

Forrrce: If it passed me by, it shows how insignificant it must have been. I'm not saying that in an arrogant way, just stating the obvious. You'd have thought that I, and others like me, would have been a prime target. You were still relatively young and impressionable, I was already old and jaded. Are you so understanding that you've never looked at something from the outside and given it a thumbs down? I think not. To do so would be super human (or even sub human). I think we're all capable of coming to our own conclusions on any subject and we all have our predjudices. In my defence, if I see something where people disappear up their own asses, I normally conclude that it ain't worth knowing. From your account of things, people did disappear up their own asses, or have I mis-read!
Even you sound mightily jaded about the whole subject.

All this crap about rare really, really, bothers me, when it's a well known fact that probably 99% of the population are more comfortable with what they know, be it music, food, car, whatever. We all enjoy the odd new thing, but we all tend to stick to what we know and like, don't we? The 1% who have the need for different things, all the time, are always going to be viewed with suspicion by the masses, aren't they? So, one has to conclude that seeking rare grooves was satisfying something more than just their musical needs. It was possibly more to do with fashion, NOT music and that possibly applies to the founding fathers too. It was just their way of being ultra hip and gaining their 15 minutes (or otherwise) of fame. It was just their way of being different, for the sake of being different or gaining a momentary commercial advantage. Does someone who constantly seeks new records really like music or are they even more jaded than I'm supposed to be? Jeez, can't anyone see how false and manipulative the whole thing probably was?

Sure, it must have been great to hear quality oldies all day long, or was it? If these records were sooooooo f*****g good, how come they were sooooooo unknown.
If only 10%/20% of the soul/funk loving population thought they were brilliant, 'cos they'd been suck(er)ed into the scene, that would still leave 80%/90% who couldn't give a rat's ass. Let's be a little more honest with our assessments, eh? I doubt if many of the records were anything else but bland or mediocre also rans. I'd love you to prove me wrong.

Plus, isn't this another case of some guys re-writing history for their own motives/gain and poo-pooing those who went before, supposedly by paying homage to them? BOLLOCKS! If they really wanted to acknowledge their forefathers/Soul/Funk, then why not drag up all the big hits along with the records that gained the most brownie points for them amongst a very small following??
BULLSHIT BAFFLES BRAINS!
F**K THEIR INSOLENCE!!!!! :evil:

Isn't this more or less your take on the current scene? See any similarities? The basic home truths apply to any/all generations. :) :) :)

Rant over. Normal service will resume shortly.

[DISCODISK]

If it passed me by, it shows how insignificant it must have been.

quinny 'EVERYTHING' passed you by. what IS tiresome is your contined trashing of every musical form/scene when you were never within a 200 mile radious of any of them,the only good thing about todays rant is that i think youve just about covered all of them now, theres nothing left is there?............

[Leatherman]

Quinny it is pretty obvious to me from your posts that your golden era was the mid/late 70's. I also get the impression that you were always more on the commercial end of things. I think rare groove happened after you had totally lost touch with the underground and therefore you weren't really intersted in it and dismissed it. Also, as you like to think that you have a pretty comprehensive knowledge of 70's soul/funk/disco it makes you a bit insecure to hear that there are loads of good records out there you've never even heard of! Easier to cast it off as a load of hyped up crap eh?

There was actually a lot of good music that came to light out of the RG scene. Of course there was some average tracks (there is in any scene) but a reasonable amount of it was bloody good and probably sounded better than when originally released. Some of the records getting played were songs any collector of soul and funk (like yourself) would already know but were new to younger clubbers - so it wasn't all rejects that didn't make the grade on original release. Along with early house and hip hop (much of which sampled the rare groove tracks) this was a very exiting time for music in London/UK.

[QUINNY]

Leatherman: Actually, I enjoyed the '80s music just as much, if not more than the late '70s.

Insecure? Maybe, but in the past year or so I've acquired loads of 'new' tracks from BITD and only a handful have made my ears prick up. The rest I would have rejected and passed by, or given only a limited number of plays BITD. Apparently, I should have been hip to all of them. :roll:
How come tracks sounded better than when originally released? That's bullshit isn't it, or does it show maybe, that the Rare Groove scene applied lower standards? Are you telling me that records weren't hyped up, either? So who's right, you or Forrrce? Of course, you've never dissed anything in your life, rather than take eons and wads of cash to fully understand it? Oh no, never. 8)

Yes, I did play at the more commercial end of the market judged by hip London standards (is that a crime?), but I still had to play records that had some balls and I had some integrity. As for loosing touch with the underground. I wasn't aware that I was ever in it. Records were released, I played 'em if they were good enough. It was that simple. I'm just very suspicious (maybe overly) of any scene where records gain kudos through their rarity rather than, or as well as, what's actually in the grooves. It's one thing to play records that become rare. It's a totally different thing to go seek 'em out and play them only for that reason. When all is said and done, it's relatively easy to appeal to a limited audience. Someone, somewhere is always going to like almost any record ever made. Just look at today's totally fragmented scene and Northern Soul (Joe 90 theme to name but one, need I say more. Don't beat me up DD, even you've got to see the funny/ironic side of that). :D :D :D

I believe you when you say it was interesting etc, but that was then, this is now and I'm writing with 20/20 hindsight and 20 years more living, learning, understanding and having to put up with jerks, assholes and jobsworths. By age 50, the J's, A's and J's had twisted my mind, so that I'm a grumpy old man now (like most other 50 somethings I know). Not an excuse, just the way it is. :cry:

Instead of worrying about me, why not throw some great examples at me, that I can actually, easily buy into and prove this cumudginly old egalitarian wrong? I'd love to be proved wrong about Rare Groove, really!!

Just a question. Why didn't Rare Groove spread much beyond London? Less than (terribly) exciting records couldn't be one of the reasons, could it? It was an acquired taste, after all?

DD: :roll: :roll: :roll: Do you enjoy misquoting?

[K-Bee]

OMG :o it has happened again!! Another "Q against the world" thread :lol: will the madness ever end??!! :lol:

On this subject:
I think the whole rare groove scene was mainly a UK thing. However I do remember one DJ in particular trying to introduce radio listeners to the whole concept at a local radio station in my area, playing loads of strange stuf i'd never heard before. The concept in itself may be hyped and design to rip people off but nevertheless, I actually learned a lot and was introduced to the likes of roberta giliam and 80s ladies through that radio show.

Funny thing is. That Dj was none other than Carsten Shack who later changed his named to Soulshock and went on to become a major league R&B producer in the US (Tony Braxton, Whitney a.o.)

[efunk_adelic]

Great thread here... I learned a lot about the RARE GROOVE/NORTHERN SOUL scene.. :D

I don't think anybody I know listens to early '70's funk music. Except for me. :D

[Leatherman]

Quinny - You seem to be very caught up on the rare word of the term Rare Groove - it was just a brand name for a 70's funk/soul revival. Like I said before, you would have known 50% of the tracks getting played. I remember cuts like Roy Ayers "Love Will Bring Us Back Together", James Brown "Stone to the Bone", Betty Wright "Clean Up Woman", Reuben Wilson "Got to get your Own" being main stays of the scene. In the 80's before CD re-issues and the internet these tracks were rare to the average Joe. You certainly couldn't go into Our Price and buy them.

Though I'm a bit younger than you, I was quietly confident I had a pretty decent 70's funk collection by the mid 80's - but there was a lot of good stuff getting played that was new to me. Things like Cymande "The Message", Jackson Sisters "I Believe in Miracles", Maceo "Across the Tracks", Lynn Collins "Think", Whole Damn Family "Seven minutes of Funk" - IMHO still all pretty wicked records. I might have known of some of these tracks, but I'd not actually heard them and I certainly hadn't seen a DJ dropping a whole set of this funky stuff to an enthusiastic packed dancefloor. To claim nothing great passed you by, so all this stuff you've never heard of must be sub standard seems a somewhat arrogant attitude.

Re a record sounding better than when it came out. It was because much of the contempory hip hop sampled James Brown-esque 70's funk/rare groove tracks it made some of these songs seem new, fresh and relevant again. Bobby Byrd "I Know you got Soul" sounded great, especially once Eric B sampled it. Maybe not better then when it came out (I didn't hear it then), but better than it would have sounded in 1979.

You just seem to being deliberately cantankerous and spoiling for an argument sometimes.

[QUINNY]

Efunk: No, you've learned nothing about Northern Soul from this thread. There are dozens of Northern Soul sites out there, if you want it straight from the horse's mouth.

I love early '70s funk. It was the first music that I spun in clubs, along with the Soul records of the day (which I wasn't so keen on).

Billy Preston - Outa Space
Lunar Funk - Mr. Penguin
Bohannon - Stop & Go
Midnite Movers - Follow The Wind
Quincy Jones - Money Runner
N.F. Porter - Keep On Keepin On (on Lizard, also a Northern Soul record)
Nino Tempo & 5th Avenue Sax - can't remember title
Johnny Taylor - Who's Makin' Love
Rufus Thomas - Boogie Ain't nothin'/ The Funky Bird
Beginning Of The End - Funky Nassau
James Brown - Loads of tracks
JBs - Ditto, but probably more (Hot Pants Road was the killer)
Bobby Byrd - can't remember titles
Dyke & the Blazers - can't remember titles
African Music Machine - Black Water Gold
Willie Henderson - The Dance Master
Meters - Lotsa tracks
Olympic Runners - Do It Over was the one
Funkadelic - lotsa tracks (didn't understand a lot though)
Cymande - The Message, Bra
Robert Parker - Get- A -Steppin'
Herbie Hancock - Chameleon
Jean Knight - Mr. Big Stuff
early Kool & The Gang 7"s

And lots more I can't remember or were later in the decade. Most of these were from '70 -'73/'74

[Leatherman]

Efunk: No, you've learned nothing about Northern Soul from this thread. There are dozens of Northern Soul sites out there, if you want it straight from the horse's mouth.

I love early '70s funk. It was the first music that I spun in clubs, along with the Soul records of the day (which I wasn't so keen on).

Billy Preston - Outa Space
Lunar Funk - Mr. Penguin
Bohannon - Stop & Go
Midnite Movers - Follow The Wind
Quincy Jones - Money Runner
N.F. Porter - Keep On Keepin On (on Lizard, also a Northern Soul record)
Nino Tempo & 5th Avenue Sax - can't remember title
Johnny Taylor - Who's Makin' Love
Rufus Thomas - Boogie Ain't nothin'/ The Funky Bird
Beginning Of The End - Funky Nassau
James Brown - Loads of tracks
JBs - Ditto, but probably more (Hot Pants Road was the killer)
Bobby Byrd - can't remember titles
Dyke & the Blazers - can't remember titles
African Music Machine - Black Water Gold
Willie Henderson - The Dance Master
Meters - Lotsa tracks
Olympic Runners - Do It Over was the one
Funkadelic - lotsa tracks (didn't understand a lot though)
Cymande - The Message, Bra
Robert Parker - Get- A -Steppin'
Herbie Hancock - Chameleon
Jean Knight - Mr. Big Stuff
early Kool & The Gang 7"s

And lots more I can't remember or were later in the decade. Most of these were from '70 -'73/'74

If you had played this set in club in the mid/late 80's it would probably be called Rare Groove by many - especially if you wanted to fill the club! I know 80% of these tracks but that doesn't mean the ones I'm not familiar with are certain to be worse than the ones I do. As Forrrce mentioned, RG extended to ealry 80's cuts and soul artists like Curtis Mayfield, Leroy Hutson but for me the real essence of the movment was raw 70's JB style funk

[QUINNY]

Leatherman: I'm not deliberately cantankerous, although I can see why you might think so. I'm just someone who's naturally cautious and suspicious of ulterior motives.

My understanding of Rare Soul is obviously something different to yours. My understanding is that the scene was filled with totally obscure 12" from artists nobody's heard of before or since (many Soul more than Funk or Disco), that never got played even when they were new!
There was a poster here about a year ago who put up reams and reams of these things, but never once explained what they were like, how good they were (except they were all brilliant :roll: ). That sorta pissed me off and soured my apreciation of the genre for good. Yeah, I've tarred every afficionado with the same brush and I know I shouldn't.

Have there been any Rare Groove compilation CDs featuring typical tracks, that might still be available? All my searches throw up no results.

Re my dismissal of tracks I don't know. Yep, I'm probably as guilty as the next in that regard. I realise my knowledge isn't fool proof, but speaking as an ex DJ (not a collector or punter) I'd like to think that we played most of the tracks that were really any good. A collector or punter would always have a much better choice or taste than a DJ. A collector/punter had none of the constraints. You could like whatever you liked and explore whatever you liked to the nth degree. As a DJ I always had a crowd to please. that makes the assessment of a record much more cutting. Can you appreciate the difference and why I'm always gonna be the way I am?