"THE LOPE SONG"

Eddie Russ was an impressive jazz keyboardist-composer-arranger who worked with numerous legends through several decades, including Sonny Stitt, Sarah Vaughn, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Roland Kirk, Hank Mobley, Cal Tjader, and Clark Terry, among many others. Russ came into his own in the 1970s with trend-setting excursions into jazz-funk that mirrored James Brown’s forays into hip-hop and dance.

Since the 70s his commercial fame in England eclipsed that earned in the U.S., but his dedication and contribution to jazz in Michigan is a career highlight he cherished the most. Russ earned awards from the Michigan Council for Arts (1986), "Best Keyboardist" by Arts Midwest (1986), and his trio made a cameo appearance in the motion picture "American Beauty, Ltd.", winner of the 1990 Berlin Film Festival.

Russ, born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, started piano lessons at age 11 and made his performing debut at 14. His teenage music activities included sitting in at all the jazz clubs with almost any artist who came through town. A popular hangout came to be the Musicians Club, where he credited learning jazz from major name figures.

His career took a major turn for three years in Traverse City at the Park Place Hotel, playing with bassist Mike Grace and drummer David Koether. There, Russ honed his creative hand and developed a bankable collection of original compositions. After the Park Place gig ended, Russ journeyed back to Albion to form the group Mixed Bag, with Koether, bassist Ron Brooks, saxophonist Larry Nozero, guitarist Jerry Glassell, and drummer Danny Spencer.

Russ’s Mixed Bag playtime fortuitously created opportunities to record five albums with legendary alto saxman Sonny Stitt (then, a Saginaw transplant from Boston), including "Portrait of a Legend" (Jazz Masters), and three solo albums for the Monument label ("Take A Look At Yourself," "See The Light"). His seminal 1974 album, Fresh Out (Soul Jazz Records) with the hit jazz-funk single, "The Lope Song," took Europe by storm.

Russ died in 1996 after an extended bout with chronic kidney failure. Below, an MP3 of "The Lope Song."
(Courtesy the Eddie Russ page preserved online at the Flint Jazz Festival)

"COOL"

Ultra hip, mega rare work from the John Danser octet. This all-instrumental jazz-funk record originally released on LP in 1977 is a must-have, and was recently reissued by Grapevine.

RADIOPHONIC ODDITIES: SUMMER 2010

Your new summer mixtape. Make sure you sort the mix by "Album" in iTunes for proper sequence. (The first track should be "The Subject Is Jazz.")

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"COME CLOSER TO ME"

The Mad Lads were from Memphis, Tennessee, and were comprised of John Gary Williams, Julius Green, William Brown and Robert Phillips. Although not one of the premier Stax Records acts, this quartet enjoyed seven R&B hits between 1965 and 1969. After changing their name from the Emeralds, their first single, "The Sidewalk Surf", flopped, but the group placed three singles in the R&B Top 20 in 1965-66, the best-known being "I Want Someone". Their first hit, "Don’t Want To Shop Around", was curiously anachronistic, owing more to doo-wop than southern soul. Later releases, including the perky "Sugar Sugar", were more typical, but the group was increasingly obscured by its more successful counterparts. In 1966, Williams and Brown were drafted and replaced by Sam Nelson and Quincy Clifton Billops Jnr.

Their '66 LP, Mad Lads in Action, features some classic soul tracks like "Come Closer to Me." There's also a killer drum break on their version of "Get Out of My Life, Woman."

"OJELE WOMAN"

From DJ Mighty Mike's website:

The Ikenga Super Stars of Africa, led by Vincent Okoroego, a former member of Steven Osita Osadebe’s Nigeria Sound Makers were a leading Igbo “guitar highlife” group of the seventies and eighties in Nigeria. The Ikengas called their style of music “Ikwokilikwo”, a fast-paced form of highlife popularized by Oliver de Coque and Godwin Kabaka Opara of the Oriental Brothers, amongst others.

The band went on to record several LP’s, while establishing themselves as one of the most beloved Nigerian groups of all time, not only in their homeland but across Africa and in Europe as well. It has long been rumored that “Nkengas in London” was an Osita Osadebe master tape hijacked by Okoroego and other members of the Nigeria Sound Makers who defected in the early seventies. Absent any evidence to the contrary, this seems likely. “Nkengas in London” sounds not at all like other Ikengas recordings, for instance, “Ikenga in Africa.” The vocals, the instrumentation, even the spoken comments at the beginning of the songs, are all classic Osadebe.

The Ikengas have had numerous personnel changes and defections over the years and while they were basically an “Igbo” group, over time they took on a broader character, enlisting musicians from other ethnic groups and Cameroun.

"MODESTY BLAISE"

Sir John Phillip William Dankworth, CBE (20 September 1927 – 6 February 2010), known in his early career as Johnny Dankworth, was an English jazz composer, saxophonist and clarinetist.

After years of gigging with big bands, Dankworth began composing film and television scores around 1966. His soundtrack for the film Modesty Blaise is groovy and kitsch in places (in keeping with the wacky film), dark and menacing in others. Jazz and pop are blended in equal measure. And of course, there's that famous break and horn sample that Gorillaz later recyled for "Rock the House."

"SHIMMY"

YToussaint McCall (born 1934, Monroe, Louisiana) is an American R&B singer and organist.

His one major success was with the single and LP "Nothing Takes the Place of You", which reached #5 in the US R&B chart, issued on Ronn Records in 1967. Although further singles and an album followed, McCall did not repeat its success.

He continued performing and recording for local record labels, and in 1988 made a cameo appearance in the John Waters film, Hairspray, lip syncing to his hit song.

The entire LP is in a soulful vein and everybody who likes deep, strong, soulful music, and also features some very funky instrumentals like "Shimmy."

"MOWGLI"

Nino Nardini's Jungle Obsession is an album of production music recorded in 1971 and released for public consumption almost 30 years later. As the title suggests, all tracks have an exotic bent -- think Martin Denny; however, the '70s production adds a more solid bass-and-drums bottom end. Some tracks are more mellow and feature loads of strings while others have primitive electronics, vibes, wah guitar and organ.

Here's the track "Mowgli," which features some luscious, dreamy arrangements and instrumentation.

"LES DUNES D'OSTENDE"

François de Roubaix (April 3, 1939, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine – November 22, 1975, Tenerife, Canary Islands) was a French film score composer.

Roubaix did not receive any formal education in music, but began studying jazz on his own at age 15, forming a band and learning trombone as an autodidact. His father, filmmaker Paul de Roubaix, made educational films, and offered to let François compose scores for them. His first film score was for a 1961 film by Robert Enrico; through the late 1960s and early 1970s he scored films for Enrico, Jose Giovanni, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Pierre Mocky, and Yves Boisset. Notable in his style is his use of folk elements, as well as electronic musical instruments such as synthesizers and early drum machines. Roubaix had a home studio where he would overdub parts until he was satisfied with the result. He died in 1975 in a diving accident; in 1976, his score for Le Vieux Fusil was awarded a César Award.

Here's a short piece from the score for the 1970 French film Les Levres Rouges.

"BLACK RITE"

Crammed with percussion-heavy stompers like the utterly astounding "Black Rite" and the splendid "Moon Goddess", Mandingo's The Primeval Rhythm of Life comes over like a top class KPM best of.

Recorded in the mid-'70s, using state of the art analogue equipment and techniques, this album was very highly regarded by Hi-Fi buffs world wide for its clarity, dynamics, sonic response and broad stereo spectrum. A groundbreaking mix of exotica, Afro Funk, and electric 70s production, this was Mandingo's first album of savage jungle electronics and the record's a landmark from the Brit easy scene, but it's also got an amazing Funky sound that sets it apart from anything else like it. There's heavy percussion, weird electronics, fuzzy guitars -- and incredible production throughout.

"BORDER CROSSING"

Jerry Goldsmith was a film and TV composer born in LA in 1929. He will be remembered for providing the soundtracks to many of the most popular films and TV series' from the 1960s onwards, including The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and The Omen.

Goldsmith studied music at USC before taking a job in the music department at CBS, working as a clerk by day and composer by night. His earliest work was for radio, before moving onto TV, where he scored The Twilight Zone, The Waltons and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He got his breakthrough into cinema when he wrote the music for John Huston's Freud, for which he received an Oscar nomination. This led to 20th Century Fox and that opened the doors to an array of big budget, high profile work.

Goldsmith has applied his talents to projects across the spectrum of cinema with sci-fi (the Star Trek films), drama (Chinatown), horror (The Omen), westerns (Rio Lobo), and comedy (Mr Baseball). One of the things that set him apart from his contemporaries was his use of unusual instruments, or the use of instruments in unusual manners. The score for Alien used steel drums and the medieval 'serpent', plus some filtering techniques to produce new and interesting sounds.

Goldsmith was recognised by awards committees throughout his career. By the time of his death in 2004, he had amassed nine Golden Globes, five Grammys, and 16 Academy Award nominations.

His soundtrack to the 1971 film The Last Run contains some great work, with tracks like "Border Crossing" creating rich, deeply evocative, dramatic soundscapes that are inherently funky.

"ME LIBERTEI"

Tony "Toni" Tornado is an actor and Brazilian singer, born in Sao Paolo in 1930.

Toni Tornado is associated with the Black Power movement in Brazil. Along with people like Tim Maia, Cassiano, Hyldon, Jorge Ben, and Banda Black Rio, Tornado was just one of a group of artists in Brazil that were taking cues from black music in the US, which made them rather polemical at the time, culturally speaking. Embracing black music from North America was one way of shaking up this attitude and asserting a black identity in a place where people had always tended to aspire towards the ideal of whiteness, which is where and how social mobility happened. This musical community, like others in West Africa and elsewhere, was building an aesthetic of its own, embraced and celebrated by the DJs of the big parties of the favelas.

In 1970, Tornado won the national phase of the V International Song Festival with the socially conscious song "BR-3". One year after Toni won the Festival, Tornado released a very rare funk and soul-influenced self-titled album, accompanied instrumentally by the Tender Trio. deon Records/EMI re-released a CD of this landmark Brazilian album back in 2002, but original copies of the LP remain nearly impossible to locate. With heavy, sample-ready tracks like "Me Libertei," it's easy to see why this Brazilian record has remained a must-have for crate diggers.

"WHAT NOW, MY LOVE?"

Carolyn Ann Franklin (May 13, 1943 – April 25, 1988) was an American Gospel and Rhythm & Blues singer and songwriter.

Carolyn was born on May 13, 1943 in Memphis, Tennessee. She was the youngest sibling of Aretha Franklin, and the daughter of Detroit preacher C. L. Franklin and Barbara Siggers Franklin, a pianist and Gospel vocalist. Carolyn and her family moved to Detroit, Michigan while Carolyn was still a baby.

Carolyn Franklin recorded in her own right, releasing numerous albums throughout the 1970s and serving as one of Aretha's background vocalists for some years as well as writing some of her songs, including "Ain't No Way" and the 1973 #1 R&B hit "Angel."

Carolyn was living at her father's West Side home in Detroit, Michigan when he was shot in 1979. She appeared as one of Aretha's background singers in the 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers."

Having never married, Carolyn died in Aretha's Bloomfield Hills, Michigan home from breast cancer on April 25, 1988, at age 43. Just ten days prior, she was awarded a B.A. in Music Education from Marygrove College. Her oldest sister, Erma Franklin, died of throat cancer in 2002.

Carolyn - like her other deceased family members - is interred at Detroit's historic Woodlawn Cemetery on North Woodward Avenue.

Carolyn's 1969 LP, Baby Dynamite, features the track "What Now, My Love?", a heavy funky female scorcher if there ever was one.

"CHILI MAC"

Preston Love was a renowned alto saxophonist. The Preston Love Orchestra was the top orchestra in the Midwest for several years before Preston moved to California in 1962. While in California, he became a top studio woodwind player and made countless recordings and television shows with nearly every big name artist. As a leader of the West Coast Motown Orchestra, Preston was the regular bandleader for the following when they were on the west coast: The Supremes, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and others too numerous to mention. Prompted by his love for Omaha and the Midwest, Preston returned to live in Omaha where he recorded Omaha Bar-B-Q with Love's best friend Johnny Otis and Otis' regular band--which by this time included the blistering guitar playing of his 14 year old son-- a kid named Shuggie Otis.

"Chili Mac" is my favorite cut from the album; greasy in all the right ways, it's a great blend of party-oriented, danceable funk and rootsy improvisation.

"THE TIGER"

Into the Wind marries a unique blend of ancient tradition with studio trickery. Eschewing all notions of superficial "Asian-fusion," this uplifting, genre-bending sound clash, recalls the afro centric harping of Dorothy Ashby and hypnotic spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane. With Lee adding equal doses of hip hop, electric jazz, and soul sensibility to the backing tracks, the captivating sound of Bei Bei’s Guzheng (a 2000 year old Chinese string instrument) comes alive on peaceful mellow joints as much as it does on Kung-Fu flavored funk tunes.