WALK THIS WAY

The Mighty Imperials: Jody’s Walk
From the forthcoming Thunder Chicken (Daptones, 2004)

Take a bunch of 16 year olds who are heavy into the real, duurrrty funk of the late 1960s…school ’em in musicianship…and then let them loose: that gets you the Mighty Imperials and their Thunder Chicken. The album was recorded a few years back for the non-defunct Desco label but never saw the light of day. Daptones has managed to step in and make sure the album is able to finally get to market.

What you can expect from it is more cuts like “Judy’s Walk” – suffused in a simple but heavy funk style originally mastered by folks like the Meters and Eddie Bo back in Nawlins of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Massive, pounding drums, southern-fried guitar licks, and organs on stabbing rampages. Some will point out: “hey, why not just go buy the Meters” and that’s not a bad argument but then again, they only made three really good albums so why not have more music to jam to?

Look for this to drop in the next few weeks and as always, see what the new joints are over at Daptones if you need to get your funk fix on.