BEAT WEEK: DOWN AND DIRTY

Wayne McGhie and the Sounds of Joy: Dirty Funk
From Wayne McGhie & The Sounds of J oy (Birchmount/Light in the Attic, 1970/2004)

Day Four of Beat Week: We take a trip up north to highlight some obscure Toronto funk (is that redundant?), recently resurfacing on Seattle’s Light in the Attic imprint. “Dirty Funk” sounds like an A-list Meters cut but from southern Canada rather than the American south.

The rumored backstory on this song and the album it’s from is that most copies of the LP were destroyed in a warehouse fire, turning a rare LP into something closer to myth. This is what’s great about funk lore: for every King or Josie, there were dozens (hundreds?) of small labels churning out some wicked material. Much of it went forgotten but that only means they’re waiting to be rediscovered.