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By O-Dub 
The Ahmad Jamal Trio: I Love Music
From The Awakening (Impulse, 1970)
Ahmad Jamal: Lament
From At The Top: Poinciana Revisited (Impulse, 1969)
Ok, I wanted to take a break from hitting you over the head with hip-hop posts nonstop while I’m in purge mode.
During Rock the Bells, when Pete Rock came on-stage to join Nas and Premier, Primo dropped a brief snippet of “I Love Music” in honor of “The World Is Yours,” and frankly, that shit sounded AMAZING over a loud sound system. I don’t know if all [...]
Continue reading AHMAD JAMAL: BE JOYOUS IN HIS LAMENT
By O-Dub 
Eugene McDaniels passed away this past Saturday, at the age of 72. I can’t do his long and illustrious career proper justice – most of what I know of his catalog constitutes a small fraction of the total number of songs he wrote and recorded. However, the few McDaniels songs I’m most familiar with rank among some of the most interesting and socially relevant I know of.
I’ve written about him in the past and here’s what I had to say:
Eugene McDaniels: Cherrystones
From Outlaw (Atlantic, 1970)
This song is so excellent [...]
Continue reading EUGENE MCDANIELS: DANCE FOR FREEDOM
By O-Dub 
Cold Duck: Cold Duck (On Ice)
Folk: A Helping Hand
L&M Jazz Quartet: Serenade to a Chicken Wing
The Profits: Fantasy of Love
All from Like People: The Sounds of Young Los Angeles (SOYLA, 197?)
I had been after this LP for a few years now, ever since first seeing at the Groove Merchant, back in the day. It was the cover art; there was something so enticing about how everyone was standing at the top of that canyon, combined with a flip on the old Motown slogan, “The [...]
Continue reading THE SOUNDS OF YOUNG LOS ANGELES
By O-Dub 
Fonce Mizell passed away yesterday. He was one-half of one of the distinctive and beloved production duos of the 1970s (and via sampling, of the 1990s, you might say).
Check out Jeff Chang’s interview with the Mizell Brothers, at the Red Bull Music Academy, from a few years back.
And most definitely check out Matthew Africa’s 2010 tribute to the Mizells.
By O-Dub 
This post has been years in the making, dating back to when I first picked up Don Julian’s soundtrack for Savage!. Apart from having a dope cover (which I jacked for a mix-CD), it’s also one of the best blaxploitation OSTs out there, which is to say: it doesn’t sound like every wanna-be Shaft ripoff out there. It still has its share of chicka-chicka-wow-wow moments, but the album is far more sophisticated than you might otherwise suspect.
That owes much to Don Julian, an important figure in Los Angeles’ R&B history (though still [...]
Continue reading SOUL KALEIDOSCOPE: THE SOUNDS AND STYLES OF DON JULIAN
By O-Dub
This is from a relatively new documentary about the late jazz composer/leader, The Edification of Weldon Irvine.
It’s Weldon performing, live, his “Here’s Where I Came In.” It’s probably my favorite composition of his, a song filled with both ineffable sadness and beauty and the clip above both captures the deep melancholy I always hear in the song (and always associate with Weldon) as well as the creative energy he had, literally, at his fingertips.
Here’s my favorite version of the song:
Weldon Irvine: Here’s Where I Came In
From Sinbad (RCA, 1976)
I love that [...]
Continue reading WELDON IRVINE PLAYING “HERE’S WHERE I CAME IN”
By O-Dub 
Prime Time
Turnbuckle
Drag Racer
Superstix
From Prime Time (Omnimusic, 1978)
As I’ve said in the past, I don’t really collect library records since, as someone who doesn’t produce but I made an exception for Prime Time after hearing DJ Murphy’s Law play out “Superstix” at one of our old Boogaloo nights. That track kicks major ass as it builds its percussive layers; b-boy breaks for real.
Moreover, the Omnimusic series has the reputation as one of the better American library series out there (a territory more or less [...]
Continue reading BORROWING PRIVILEGES: OMNIMUSIC’S PRIME TIME
By O-Dub 
A couple of weeks back, a forum member on the-breaks.com managed to solve one of the oldest sampling mysteries still out there: where did the bassline for “Shook Ones II” come from? Amazing, for fifteen years, no one had figured this out though that wasn’t for lack of trying. 1
I wrote up the story behind the find and the larger traditions of sample sourcing for the LA Times last week and it was an enjoyable travel back to an era where I was actively participating in sample sleuthing. By coincidence, I was [...]
Continue reading SAMPLE SLEUTHING
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