Monday, September 24, 2007

SOUL BROTHERS TESTIFY (PART I)


Heavy heavy funk from the Louisiana scene of the late 60s and 1970s -- and a great collection that really gets past the dominance of the New Orleans sound. The set moves way past the Crescent City to uncover a wealth of great bits recorded in smaller studios located in Shreveport, Lake Charles, and a variety of tiny scenes in the southwest side of Louisiana -- and the result is a great batch of tunes with a really gritty, down-n-dirty sound.

There's a wealth of great funky styles in the set -- including James Brown-inspired jammers, southern soul burners, and some other great modes that show that Louisiana's got a heck of a lot more to offer than just New Orleans funk. The State has its own original take on black music influenced by New Orleans and tinged with the flavour of the area’s creole culture, which for a large part is separate and self-sufficient from the mainstream of American life; this makes many of these not only highly desirable, but impossible to find. The super-rare 'One Day’ by Tabby Thomas, that sells for nearly a $1000 on the infrequent occasion when it comes up for sale, is one of funk’s holy grails, and the low-down and dirty 'I Got A Groove’ by JJ Caillier also rarely surfaces.

But perhaps the rarest and nastiest track on this comp is "Soul Brothers Testify", performed with fierce intensity by Chester Randle's Soul Senders, and sampled by DJ Shadow on the track "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain" (from his landmark album, "Entroducing.")

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