WHO FLIPPED IT BETTER?: GAP MANGIONE’S “DIANA IN THE AUTUMN WIND”

Gap Mangione: Diana In the Autumn Wind b/w The XIth Commandment
From 7″ (GRC, 1968)

There’s no reason why there shouldn’t be jazz records on 7″ yet I admit I’m always a little surprised to see them when they pop up. I suppose I always imagine that 7″ singles were mostly for jukeboxes (not completely untrue) and the idea of someone at a juke joint popping in and saying, “I want to hear me some jazz!” strikes me as incongruous but hey, whatever floats your boat.

In any case, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this 7″ existed, pairing two of the best songs from Mangione’s sought-after Diana In the Autumn Wind album. I’m not sure how jazz fans originally responded to this album back when it dropped – all said, it’s a pretty damn good jazz-funk effort (though of course, this is precisely what many purists in the ’60s would have likely hated about it).

Like many, the song that turned me onto the title track was Slum Village’s “Fall In Love,” circa 2000:¹

Slum Village: Fall In Love
From Fantastic Vol. 2 (Good Vibe, 2000)

As it turns out, I’d have to guess Dilla was up on this album at least two years prior since he was part of the Ummah team that produced ATCQ’s The Love Movement and therefore, likely would have had a hand in sampling from Mangione’s album for “Pad and Pen.”

Two years later and the album suddenly appeared on three different albums by three different artists (including Slum V). Ghostface was the first that year to get a Mangione-sampled track to market. Then, by early summer, People Under the Stairs followed suit, using two songs from Diana to make two different tracks, including this:

People Under the Stairs: Fredly Advice (hidden track)
From Question In The Form Of An Answer (Om, 2000)²

Then, years later, when Carlos Nino and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson were prepping the Suite for Ma Dukes, they riffed on “Diana” for their interpolation of “Fall In Love”:

Carlos Nino and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson: Fall In Love
From Suite for Ma Dukes (Mochilla, 2009)

Dilla managed to revisit this same song three years later when he looped a different part for the Jaylib project:

Jaylib: The Official
From Champion Sound (Stones Throw, 2003)³

Personally, it’s hard to beat S.V.’s “Fall In Love” as the best flip of it but I do commend Dilla and Madlib for taking another part of the song and totally making it work for “The Official.” What say you?

Far as I know, no one’s bothered to work with “The XIth Commandment” but pretty damn tasty with all that electric piano and snappy drum work, plus that unexpected bridge section with the piped in applause noise.