Early 70s RCA-Funk
disco_che
1,115 Posts
Anyone knows the story behind all the great stuff that came out on RCA in the early 70s. Great recordings with the right amount of grit, great bands. Nite-Liters/New Birth, Jimmy Castor, Crown Heights Affair, Boobie Knight... Did they have a killer A&R in these years?
Comments
And the killer modern soul singalongaSouthport faves too.
Good label. Pulse rate imperceptibly ticks up on seeing the big letters when flicking through boxes of 12s and 7s.
for example some from the top of my head
Columbia[/b]
Eddy Jacobs Exchange - Pull My Coat
Willard Butron & The Funky Four - Funky In Here
Patty Drew Hard to Handle
Eddie Bo - Lover And A Friend
Atlantic[/b]
Tony Avalon & The Belairs - Sexy Coffee Pot
Beginning Of The End - Funky Nassau
...endless more
Mercury[/b]
Gloria Bouschell - Find Yourself Another Man
Joyce Dunn A New Change Of Address
George Jackson - Tossin' And Turnin'
Aaron Neville - Hercules
Epic[/b]
Vera Hamilton - But I Aint No More
Johnny Otis Show - Watts Breakaway
Joe Sherman - Fever
Warner[/b]
Charles Wright
BTW the last song you posted by new birth is awesome
I know what you mean but the special thing about RCA is the cohesiveness of sound aesthetics and band selection, as if there has been somebody with a very clear perception of what raw funk has to be like and sound like. I want to know if there was somebody with a masterplan.
I like the studio version better but it has been taken off youtube due to the common majorlabel bitchery.
yesterday find is a true rca banger.
b/w for some reason this 45 has a bit of a downside to us dutchies
Never saw that 7". Can you upload, plaese? Did you find "Die Kette" also yesterday? Would be a funny coincidence.
i have die kette for a few years now.
it just happend to be in my 45 bag from playin out yesterday. togheter with some other stuff thats in your mix.
Thanks for the upload. Great tune, sounds very familiar but I'm not sure if it's just ressembling another well known melody or if it was compiled/mixed by someone.
Surprisingly good while most football-related records use to be
Have to look out for it.
Possibly that's the one. 10 years ago my co-habitant and DJ-partner used to play it very often.
For one, weren't all the New Birth/Nite-Liters all the same players and production team? That's a lot of cohesion. Love those records.
yep, was about to say - maybe Harvey Fuqua is who you're talking about
In case of Nite-Liters/New Birth and Boobie Knight Fuqua was the man behind. Not in case of Castor, Crown Heights Affair. Possibly all these records seem to be so cohesive because all the recordings in question have been made in NYC RCA Studios B & C and in most of the cases a certain Jim Crotty has been the recording engineer.
http://www.thirteen.org/soul/2009/04/14/november-1-1972-2/
What happened to this project? No updates in forever... I remember O-Dub writing about it
wow. thanks for sharing!
And the occasional diaper wouldn't hurt either.
I think it was Buzz Willis who was working their A&R in the black music department back then.
It's interesting...in interviews I've seen with 1970's soul acts, if they recorded for RCA in the early part of the decade, they all complain that the label was just not set up for black music in any kind of way. Jimmy Castor (who I interviewed for Roctober), the Friends of Distinction, the Main Ingredient, even producer Harvey Fuqua (who was possibly the main person responsible for RCA's move into R&B in the first place)...all agreed that the label was no soul factory.
Even though they weren't funk, Fuqua was also bringing his old doo-wop buddies from the fifties to the label (Moonglows, Sonny Til & the Orioles, Shirelles) to the label, updating their styles to the soul sound.
It's also worth noting that all the major labels were starting to make massive committments to R&B...even though all these companies were releasing soul music to an extent, they basically left it to Stax/Atlantic, Motown and all the indies in the sixties...but around 1971-72 they started digging in deep with the sound.
BTW, Willard Burton's "Funky In Here" was on Capitol, another little-noted soul label.
Thanks for correcting me, my fault.
Those were on Capitol[/b], of course:
Willard Butron & The Funky Four - Funky In Here
Patty Drew Hard to Handle
Eddie Bo - Lover And A Friend
That's what I was hoping for - first hand exclusive premium information.
Thanks for the insight.
A few of these were just licensed by the majors from other labels who had done the sessions.
Harvey Fuqua definitely had a fair bit to do with some of the RCA groups, the Shirelles stuff was enlightening for me when I first found it.