Archive for the ‘disco’ Category

D Train

09/06/2011

D Train (You’re The One For Me) – D Train

Prelude Records – 1982

“D Train” was a collaborative effort between the band’s namesake James “D. Train” Williams, who was featured as the lead vocalist and songwriter, and Hubert Eaves III, a keyboardist and producer who performed the instrumentation on the recordings. Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Williams himself was a R&B/dance producer as well. He and Eaves met during high school and began performing together, although Eaves would spend most of the 1970s as a member of the R&B band Mtume. (Notorious B.I.G. – Juicy…ring any bells?)

However, by the 1980s, he and Williams had teamed up again. The group named themselves “D. Train” after a nickname Williams had acquired as a football player in high school.

D. Train released their first single “You’re the One For Me” in late 1981. The track became an instant success, hitting #1 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart that year; it has been remixed and re-released successfully several times since, and was contemporaneously covered by Paul Hardcastle with vocalist Kevin Henry in the United Kingdom and more recently interpolated by Westcoast MPC heavyweights Exile and DJ Day.

The duo’s self-titled debut album (which prominently featured the “You’re the One For Me” title on the front cover, and the album sometimes became known by this name) followed in early 1982, and several additional singles from this effort were successful on both the R&B and Dance charts, although they were not as popular as the debut hit. Among these tracks were “Keep On,” which reached #2 on the Dance chart and a cover version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David penned “Walk On By”, that owed more to the Isaac Hayes version than to Dionne Warwick’s original recording.

In 1983, the band released their follow-up album, Music. The title track became another dance-floor anthem and is the most gospel infused of D-Train’s floor fillers.  This track nearly equalled the success of the group’s debut single. Several other singles from the album were moderately successful.

In 1984, D. Train had their only Billboard Hot 100 entry with “Something’s On Your Mind,” which climbed to #79 and was later covered by Miles Davis on his album You’re Under Arrest. The title single also cracked the top five on the R&B chart, becoming the group’s biggest hit in that market as well. Despite this success, the group would disband that same year.

Following the dissolution of D-Train the band, Williams embarked on a moderately successful solo career. Although he was billed as a solo artist, however, he did continue to work with Eaves acting as a producer and key instrumentalist. In 1986, Williams released his debut album, Miracles of the Heart, which featured a Top Ten R&B single, “Misunderstanding.” The follow-up single, “Oh, How I Love You Girl” also performed well in the R&B market. His second album, In Your Eyes followed in 1988.

James “D Train” Williams is currently a DJ for Heart & Soul Channel 51 on the Sirius Satellite Radio service based in New York.

Get on the D Train right here,

or

HERE

@320

Enjoy.

Posted in disco, funk | Leave a Comment »

People… Hold On.

29/01/2011

 

People… Hold On – Eddie Kendricks

Tamla Records -1972

 

“Sometimes you have to let go… to see if there was anything worth holding on to.” ~ Anonymous

 

Edward James Kendrick was born in Union Springs, Alabama on December 17, 1939, the son of Johnny and Lee Bell Kendrick. He had one sister, Patricia, and three brothers, Charles, Robert, and Clarence. His family moved to Birmingham, where he met and began singing with his best friend Paul Williams in their church choir in the late 1940s. In 1955, Kendricks, Williams, and friends Kell Osborne and Jerome Averette formed a doo-wop group called The Cavaliers, and began performing around Birmingham. The group decided to move for better opportunities in their musical careers, and in 1957 the group moved to Cleveland, Ohio. In Cleveland, they met manager Milton Jenkins, and soon moved with Jenkins to Detroit, Michigan, where the Cavaliers renamed themselves ‘The Primes’. Under Jenkins’ management, the Primes did well for themselves in the Detroit area, eventually creating a female spin-off group called The Primettes (later The Supremes). In 1961, Osbourne moved to California, and the Primes disbanded. Kendricks and Paul Williams joined forces with members of The Distants to become The Elgins, who signed to Motown that same year as… The Temptations.

The Temptations quickly became the most successful male vocal group of the 1960s. Although technically Kendricks was first tenor in the group’s harmony, he predominately sang in a falsetto voice. Among the Temptations songs Kendricks sang lead on were “Dream Come True”, the group’s first charting single; “The Way You Do the Things You Do”, the group’s first US Top 20 hit; “I’ll Be in Trouble”; “The Girl’s Alright With Me”, a popular b-side that Kendricks co-wrote; “Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)”; “Get Ready”; “Please Return Your Love to Me”; and “Just My Imagination”. He was also allowed to sing a few leads in his natural voice such as “May I Have This Dance”. He shares lead vocal duty on other records, including “You’re My Everything” (shared with David Ruffin), and a long string of Norman Whitfield produced psychedelic soul records where all five Temptations sang lead, such as the Grammy winner “Cloud Nine”, “I Can’t Get Next to You”, and “Ball of Confusion”. He also leads on “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”, a popular duet with Diana Ross and the Supremes, and on the Temptations’ famous version of the Christmas classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

In the Temptations, Kendricks was responsible for creating most of the group’s vocal arrangements, and also served as wardrobe manager, including the now famous purple suits the group wore for one performance. He also co-wrote several Temptations songs apart from “The Girl’s Alright With Me” including “Isn’t She Pretty”  and “Don’t Send Me Away”. His favorite food was cornbread, and as a result he was nicknamed “Cornbread” (or “Corn“ for short) by his groupmates. According to Otis Williams, Kendricks romantically pursued Diana Ross, lead singer of the Supremes, and he was said to have been close friends with Martha Reeves of the Vandellas. In her second book, Supreme Faith, Supremes singer Mary Wilson writes that she and Kendricks were lovers “briefly,” but remained close friends.

Kendricks remained in the group through the rest of the decade, but a number of issues began to push him away from it in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was uncomfortable with singing the psychedelic style that Whitfield was now crafting for the group as opposed to the romantic ballads they had sung under the direction of Smokey Robinson, his friend Paul Williams was often too ill to perform with the group, and Kendricks often found himself at odds with bandmates Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin. As he grew away from the group, Kendricks began to rekindle his friendship with ex-Temptation David Ruffin, who convinced him to leave the group. In a 1991 interview with Urban Street Kendricks said he actually started to make the decision to leave the group as early as 1965, even though that was when the band was finally starting to take off, because of things that “weren’t quite proper.” He explained that they were working with people that “didn’t have their best interests at heart.” Kendricks, however, initially decided to stay in the group because he was worried he would not get the support he needed if he left the group. Kendricks also expressed the fact that his relationship with Berry Gordy was less than cordial. “Berry Gordy is a man I don’t know, I only met him about three times,” he said, but “I know he didn’t particularly care for me.” Kendricks stated that he did not agree with many decisions that were made. Kendricks recorded one last hit single with the Temptations, 1971′s “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)”; by the time the record reached #1 on the US pop charts in April 1971, Kendricks had quit The Temptations in May 1971 and signed a solo deal with Motown’s Tamla imprint, but many of his problems with Motown would reoccur.

For his second outing on Tamla “People … Hold On” the former Temptations leader  expanded his horizons, dabbling with communally conscious soul and making initial forays into dance music that would predate disco. As he had done for Kendricks solo debut All By Myself, producer Frank Wilson contributes several tunes. Among them is “If You Let Me” that kicks off the disc with a bright groove, custom made for the vocalists’ sanguine lead. Things get downright funky on the sanctified “Let Me Run Into Your Lonely Heart”. The mercurial beat is bathed in distortion and wah-wah guitar that trades back and forth with a syncopated clavinet. All the while, Kendricks shows off his range-free tenor as he effortlessly vacillates in and out of his trademark overdrive falsetto. The sacred influence of “Day By Day” is underscored by some stellar keyboard with organ and piano runs that could just as easily have been heard in a Sunday morning prayer meeting.

The nearly eight-minute “Girl You Need A Change Of Mind” is nothing short of an epic precursor to the extended four-on-the-floor numbers that would soon be christened as ‘disco’. In addition to providing an above average R&B groove, Kendricks’ new band — the Washington D.C.-based Young Senators — are joined by the unmistakable touch of Eddie “Bongo” Brown’s rhythmically limber congas. The record buying and radio listening public obviously agreed as the song was edited and issued on a 45 rpm that made it to the Top 15 R&B Singles survey.
Returning to the project’s thematic motif “Someday We’ll Have A Better World” is a mid-tempo optimistic track with a plea for  more peaceful co-existence. The project’s title composition “My People … Hold On” is  a stunning opus of a song with stark contrasting sounds and Kendricks begging the audience for some sanity in an otherwise crazy world.

If you were ever to buy an Eddie Kendricks album, THIS would be the one to get. It’s by far his greatest work.

Exasperated by lack of creative and financial control, Kendricks left Motown, forced to sign away the rights to his royalties to do so, in 1978, moving first to Arista Records, and later to Atlantic Records. By this time, his popularity had waned, and he was also gradually losing his voice as a result of chain smoking. He and David Ruffin briefly re-joined the Temptations for a 1982 reunion tour. Ruffin and Kendrick (Kendricks dropped the “s” from his stage name during the 1980s) reportedly met up one night when Ruffin went to watch Kendrick perform in a nightclub; Kendrick spotted Ruffin in the crowd, pointed him out, and invited him to come up on stage and perform with him. Afterward they talked about touring on their own and recorded an album as a duo for RCA in 1988.

In 1989, Kendrick, Ruffin, and their Temptations bandmates were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There, Kendrick and Ruffin made plans with fellow former Temptation Dennis Edwards to tour and record as “Ruffin/Kendrick/Edwards, Former Leads of The Temptations.” The Ruffin/Kendrick/ Edwards project was cut short in 1991, when Kendrick was diagnosed with lung cancer and David Ruffin died of a drug overdose. Although, Kendrick and Edwards continued to tour for the remainder of 1991.

In late 1991, Kendrick, by now living in his native Birmingham, Alabama, underwent surgery to have one of his lungs removed in hopes of preventing the spread of the cancer. He continued to tour through the summer of 1992, when he fell ill again and was hospitalized. Kendrick died on October 5, 1992 of lung cancer in Birmingham at the age of 52.

 

…Hold on, to your very own copy of his masterpiece album here,

 

Or…

 

 

HERE

@320

 

 

 

Enjoy.

Posted in disco, pysch-funk-jazz-soul, soul | 1 Comment »

Edwin Birdsong

05/01/2011

 

Edwin Birdsong -Edwin Birdsong

Philadelphia International Records – 1979

 

A student of Juilliard and an acomplished  Jazz musician, Edwin Birdsong is a Grammy winner and pioneer in his field. A musician, writer, producer and performer…. he has performed with many musical greats –Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Stevie Wonder, to name a few.

Edwin began playing music on the Organ and Piano in his Father’s Los Angeles church. While perfecting his Blues and Jazz skills at local Clubs, he would also join the Los Angeles Community Choir, singing and playing with artists such as Merry Clayton, DJ Rogers and Billy Preston.

After Being Drafted and serving a tour in Vietnam, he was stationed in Germany… where he began playing in clubs all over the country and later France before moving to New York to Study. He became a composition major at Juilliard after 2 years at the Manhattan School of Music.
In 1971 he would sign with Polydor Records, with one of the highlights of his year coming when the 86-piece New York Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall featuring his own music, transcribed from his first record.
Birdsong was signed with William Morris Agency after Sam McKeith saw him on TV. (Sam is also the agent that found Bruce Springsteen, the original BAWSE…sorry, officer Ricky!). Edwin continued recording and performing at any opportunity , issuing two albums featuring his special brand of funk, rock, fusion, and jazz, “What It Is” in 1971 and “Supernatural” in 1973.

In 1975 Birdsong decided the time was right to strike out on his own, and he released “Dance of Survival” on Bamboo Records, a label he co-owned.
He then recorded “Edwin Birdsong” for Philadelphia International in 1979, which included the popular singles “Cola Bottle Baby”and  ‘”Phizz-Phizz.”

Much success was to come from teaming with master vibist Roy Ayers. Edwin changed Roy’s style by singing with him on “Running Away” which they co-wrote which featured Edwin’s voice out front. Edwin wrote “Freaky Deaky”, for Ubiquity, Roy’s group… when they played it in a Chicago Club the people went wild and they knew it was an automatic Hit. Based on the success of those songs,  Birdsong would go on to co-produce Ayers’ LPs “Vibrations”, “Lifeline”, and “Let’s Do It”.   They also collaborated on productions and songs for the group “Ladies of the Eighties”, with Birdsong naming the group in a moment of inspiration. Edwin also managed Roy and signed him to Oscar Cohen at ABC Booking.
After years of solely working with Ayers, Birdsong recorded the singles “Perfect Love” in 1984 and “Son of a Rapper Snapper” in 1985 for his own label Singh records, named after one of his sons.

Today’s superstars know Birdsong’s secret…funk and soul with an irresistible beat. That is why Snoop Dogg, DJ Quik, GangStarr and Kanye West have all sampled his music on some of their most popular hits. If you have ever enjoyed A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Apple Bum”, or De La Soul’s “Me Myself and I”, then you have really been grooving to Edwin Birdsong’s tune’s.

In 2008  Birdsong finally found the critical success that had eluded him for so many years…two Grammy’s would be his, for his part in the Kanye West song ‘Stronger’.  Two Grammy Awards  as Songwriter and Publisher with The French house music duo, Daft Punk for ‘Best Electronic/Dance Album’ and Best Dance Recording. Daft Punk had liberally sampled Birdsong’s  “Cola Bottle Baby” for their platinum selling song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”.  Inspired by his tour Dj’s love of all things french and hipsterish, Kanye West would then go on to sample that song for “Stronger” winning  the Grammy’s for Best Rap Solo Performance and Album Of The Year

In 2009, Birdsong went back to his first love, live performance. He was a featured performer on the Key-tar with the band Trulio Disgracias on the California leg of the popular underground music festival the Warped Tour.

Rumor has it a tour is in the works for 2011…

 

Get down with a cola bottle baby right here.

 

Or

 

HERE

@320

 

Enjoy.

Posted in disco, funk, soul | Leave a Comment »

Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll

16/12/2010

 

Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll – Vaughn Mason & Crew

Brunswick Records – 1980

 

New York City native Vaughn Mason’s claim to fame is penning the spectacular disco/funk single “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll,” credited to Vaughan Mason & Crew. That song, released on Brunswick Records, hit the top five of the U.S. R&B chart in 1980 and became the title track of the group’s first and only album.

This is probably the best-ever album of rollerskating grooves – and is the most famous entry into a short-lived funk genre that sprung up around the rollerskating craze of the late 70s and early 80s.

The rollerskate sound took a tight stepping funk groove from earlier years, and mixed it with the extended instrumental style of club music – creating a sound that was a mix of funk and disco that worked perfectly for skating around a track, and which had a huge influence on the beat of early hip hop.

The centerpiece of the album’s the massive sample track “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” – an instantly recognizable number that features tight vamping guitar and good choppy rhythms. The cut’s offered up here in 2 parts – and the rest of the record’s just as great, with titles that include “Roller Skate”, “We’re Gonna Funk You Up”, and “Thinking About You Baby”.

The single also became sample food for a multitude of rap songs, including Digital Underground’s “Doowutchyalike,” Heavy D’s “Black Coffee,” De La Soul’s “Cool Breeze on the Rocks,” and Redman’s “Slide and Rock On.”

Two other singles from Vaughan Mason & Crew (“Roller Skate” and “Jammin’ Big Guitar”) followed for Brunswick, though neither fared hardly as well as the first. Later on, Mason teamed up with Butch Dayo for a pair of Salsoul singles — “You Can Do It” and “Party on the Corner” — both of which im my opinion suck pretty bad.

 

Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll and grab this funky roller disco gem here.

 

OR

 

HERE

@320

 

Enjoy.

Posted in disco, funk | 1 Comment »

Life On Mars & Voyager

26/04/2010

Life On Mars/ Voyager   Philadelphia International Records 1976-1978

Dexter Wansel

Dexter Wansel is an American keyboardist, who was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When Wansel was 12 years old, he got the job of a gofer for the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia, going to get sandwiches and clothes out of the cleaners for the various acts that performed at the venue like Stevie Wonder and Patti Labelle. Many years later, Wansel would co-write a number one R&B hit for Labelle. In 1975, Wansel met Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff when he was a member of a band called Yellow Sunshine, which also boasted guitarist Roland Chambers who would later become a part of MFSB, the house band for Gamble & Huff’s Philadelphia International Records. Becoming a part of the staff creative collective, Wansel began arranging, playing keyboards, and writing songs for the label’s acts including the O’Jays, Teddy Pendergrass, and the Intruders, among others.

Whilst Wansel was relatively unknown outside the U.S., many have suggested that his influence on pop music, as both a producer and performer in the mid 1970s, led to the development of new age soul and jazz funk. His most successful album was Life On Mars, released on the Philadelphia International record label in 1976. This album is SOOOOOOOOO  good…..I have literally seen fights break out over this in record stores, My man Reza almost got his copy snapped  in half (before he could even buy it!!!!!) by a disgruntled shopkeeper who objected to Rez’s  bartering on the price. On this gem of gems Mr.  Wansel played keyboards, Derek Graves played bass guitar whilst a session singer, Terri Wells, was on vocals. The remaining sound was filled in by Dexter’s rhythm section called The Planets featuring Darryl Brown, Calvin Harris, Bobby Malach, Al Harrison and the aforementioned Graves.

During the second half of the 1970s, space travel and sci-fi were important themes in the ambient U.S. culture and therefore in funk, jazz, and jazz funk, and were reflected in in Dexter’s titles and music. Listening to other tracks on the album, like “Stargazer”, “Theme from the Planets” and “Rings of Saturn”, it can be seen that a space theme runs through most of  his music from this era .

The Drums at the beginning of “Theme of the Planets” have been used numerous times by everyone from  Boogie Down Productions “Jack of Spades” &K-Solo’s “Your Mom’s in My Business” Kanye West also used “Life on Mars” for Lupe Fiasco’s “The Cool”.

Dexter keeps up the space jazz funk groove that was begun on Life On Mars — with those fat, thumping bass lines, elastic lead guitar, atmospheric soul vocals and loads and loads of keys — spatial work on Rhodes, Moogs and ARPs, It’s all done in a funky style that is not always heard on “Philly Sound” releases. Dexter arranged and produced just about everything on Voyager, with Graves back at his side and many new players added to the lineup including Cynthia Biggs on vocals.

This record has been sampled by a ton of people as well, most recently by Cannibal Ox for “The F Word” and 9th Wonder for  “The Gift”.

Take  trip into space with yer man Dexter right HERE and HERE if ya wanna keep up with us..

Or..

All packed up nice and tidy right about…

HERE

@320…always, enjoy.

Posted in disco, jazz | 1 Comment »

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