Loading summary
Transcript41 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparade plus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show 50 years ago this month, the number one album in America was a smooth, sinuous slice of uncut funk. It was a soundtrack lp, but also an autourist album in its own right by a man already regarded as a legend. Curtis Mayfield, Superfly, from The Gordon Parks Jr. Movie of the same name, was a watershed not only for the man who recorded it, but for all of popular black music in the 70s. It affirmed not only that RB and soul had been transformed by the rhythmic form now known as funk, but that funk was commercially viable with a massive crossover audience. And there was more than one way to funk. The 70s was positively a wash in funk in all of its forms, whether Latin fusion funk from bands like War to the romantic boudoir funk of Marvin Gaye, let's Get it on. To the strutting funk of the Ohio Players. One seminal group even put funk right in their name, Funkadelic. Really, it was two groups, Parliament and Funkadelic, hosting a rotating cast of some of the best players in funk music. These artists all scored massive hit singles, but crucially, they also sold truckloads of albums. All of the above acts scored number one or platinum LPs. Indeed, funk in the 70s was perhaps best appreciated on long playing vinyl, where its grooves seem to stretch into outer space.
- [04:00]
B
Let me rise.
- [04:04]
A
Up. Bands like Earth, Wind and Fire raised the LP to an art form, not only routinely topping the album chart, but putting out elaborate packages that rivaled LPs from the world of rock. But as funk in the 70s competed with not only rock but disco, it found itself having to adapt to keep up with the relentless demand for dance rhythms. Bands that were once pure funko were adapting smoother grooves into their sound.
- [05:08]
B
Too Hot, Too Hot Lady, Gotta Run.
- [05:12]
A
For Shelter and certain Seventies funk craftsmen. Smoothed themselves out into 80s pop songsmiths.
- [05:29]
B
You are the sun, you are the.
- [05:33]
A
Rain to say nothing of the foundation that funk laid for an entirely new genre. Sure, we know what funk became in the decades after the 70s, but the richness of funk at its peak and the ways it was consumed back in the day are vital to understanding how popular popular music found its groove. OG Funk underpins so much of what we take for granted in pop to this day.
- [06:16]
B
I can dig rapping, I'm ready, I can dig scapping.
- [06:25]
A
Today on Hit Parade, after decades of funk paying it forward, we're here to provide the big payback. Whether delivered by established soul legends. Or rising young upstarts, Funk was the lingua franca of the seventies, not only for dancing but for appreciating at length. And it took one particular soul legend, who had shaped several waves of black art, to establish that funk would fuse with psychedelic soul and shape the decade to come.
- [07:18]
B
We can deal with rockets and dreams but reality?
- [07:22]
A
What does it mean?
- [07:23]
B
Ain't nothing said Cause Red is dead.
- [07:31]
A
And that's where your hit Parade marches today, the week ending October 28, 1972, when Freddy's Dead, the lead single from Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack, broke into the top 10 on Billboard's Hot 100 and reached its number two peak on the soul singles chart. The same week, the Superfly album settled into a more month long run at number one on the Billboard album chart. On Superfly, Mayfield sang about trying to get over, but funk had already gotten over and taken center stage. Hey Hip Parade listeners, I have a special announcement for you. For a limited time, you can get six months of Slate plus for just $29. That's 50% off as a Plus member. In addition to no ads on any of Slate's podcasts and unlimited reading on the Slate site, you'll get member exclusive episodes and segments from shows like Slow Burn, Amicus and the Political Gabfest. For Hit Parade fans, you'll get to hear every episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. If Slate has become a part of your listening routines, whether it's covering major news events from elections to social issues to historic court decisions, or analyzing viral trends or decoding cultural mysteries. We ask that you support our work by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now@slate.com hitparadeplus Again, that's just $29 for six months to access all of Slate's content and support our work. This offer is good through October 28, so sign up now@slate.com hitparadeplus. While we were preparing this episode of Hit Parade, the music world lost artist Leon Ivy Jr. Better known as 90s rapper Coolio, at age 59, and I for one couldn't help but reflect on how essential Golden Age funk was to Coolio's breakthrough. Though he is best known for the chart topping 1995 single Gangsta's Paradise, Coolio's Big break on the charts came a year earlier in 94 with Fantastic Voyage, a number three hit that borrowed its title, its chorus hook and pretty much its entire groove from this 1980 R B smash, Fantastic Voyage by Dayton, Ohio funk group Lakeside. And like so many funk groups, Lakeside had gotten their start in the early 70s when they were first signed by Curtis Mayfield's Curtum record label. So many roads lead back to Curtis Mayfield.
- [11:31]
B
Just move on up toward your destination, though you may.
- [11:42]
A
I bring up Coolio very briefly here first to wish him a peaceful journey into the afterlife, But also to explain what this Hip Parade episode will not be Nearly half a century past the birth of hip hop, it's tempting to view funk largely through that lens considering how 70s classics by the likes of, say, Stevie Wonder. Were later transformed by rappers like Coolio into hits like Gangsta's Paradise. And sure, the entire G Funk era Coolio was a part of in the 90s has funk in its name for a reason. What all the niggas saying we could spend this entire episode playing rap classics that owe their existence to vintage 70s funk from the De La Soul hit that samples Funkadelic and the Ohio Players.
- [13:13]
B
It's Just Me, Myself and I.
- [13:19]
A
It's.
- [13:19]
B
Just me, Myself and I.
- [13:24]
A
22 PAC songs that are built out of old James Brown records. To the Big Punisher hit that interpolates a deep cut from Earth Wind and. And by the way, while we are now decades past the G Funk era, even the charts of 2022 are living in a world funk created. For example, this chart topping single by Silk Sonic, the duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak called Love's Train, a summer 2022 number one song on Billboard's Adult R B chart, Is a remake of an old hit by this 70s 80s funk group, confunct. As much as I love all of this R and B and hip hop heritage wrought by first wave funk, to me it's a little unfair to regard funk music as merely a blueprint for music that came later. Funk isn't just for DJs, producers and crate diggers. In its day, funk was pop music, Dominating the charts nearly as reliably that decade as rock and disco. In this episode, I want to talk about how funk music was consumed at the time and how it came to define what pop sounded like. No decade was ever as good to funk as the 1970s. But of course, first funk had to be invented, and for that we briefly need to travel back to the 1960s and the man known as Soul Brother One. You had to know we'd be covering him. The self proclaimed hardest working man in show business, James Brown, who codified the very concept of the one. Few records are as epical as Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, James Brown's first top 10 pop hit, and the dividing line between how rhythm was understood in soul music before and after. In his book the Heart of Rock and Soul, critic Dave Marsh writes, quote, no record before Papa's Got a Brand New Bag sounded anything like it. No record since has been unmarked by it, unquote.
- [17:07]
B
Papa's Got a Brand New Bag.
- [17:14]
A
As I touched on briefly in our fifth anniversary episode of Hit Parade, Brown's innovation was to lead his band toward what he called the one that is placing the rhythmic emphasis on the first beat in a measure rather than the second and fourth beats, which is more typical in rock and other traditional pop songs. Papas, which reached number 10 in the summer of 1965, was the hit that effectively introduced this concept and it became the bedrock of funko and other forms of rhythmic music. Brown refined this approach on later tracks. On his 1967 number seven hit Cold Sweat, for example, you can really hear how James has distilled the one down to its essence. By the dawn of the 70s, brown had boiled down this highly syncopated approach to the point where his band was essentially a pure funk rhythm section. Listen to his seminal 1970 single Sex Machine. A number two R&B number 15 pop hit, this groove is the blueprint for much of 70s funk. Running parallel to James Brown's funky revolution was another innovator who seemed to hear things differently. The North Carolina born New Jersey raised George Clinton, later known as the Prime Minister of Funk, Uncle Jam and Dr. Funkenstein. Clinton and his funky adventures couldn't be contained within just one band. I'LL Bet yout was the first chart hit for Funkadelic, a number 22 R B number 50 pot pit in 1969 that fused psychedelic soul with rumbling bass lines. Clinton formed Funkadelic while his original band, the Parliaments, were fighting off a trademark lawsuit on their name. When the Parliaments won their lawsuit, George converted them to just Parliament, and they too shifted in a much funkier direction. Suck Both of these bands, Parliament and Funkadelic, continued to record for more than a decade, with George Clinton switching names and sets of players from album to album. The lines between them blurred enough that most fans referred to Clinton's exploits as Parliament Funkadelic or simply P Funk. Generally, Funkadelic was the more experimental band. Among its signature innovations was the seminal 1971 funk rock instrumental Maggot Brain. With searing, crying guitar by Eddie Hazel, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain is still considered one of the greatest guitar songs of all time. Time. We will hear plenty more from P. Funk later in this episode. If James Brown and George Clinton were funk's innovators, other late 60s hit makers were popularizers, shifting their soul music hard in the direction of funk. New Orleans instrumentalists the Meters scored with a swampy take on funk as early as 1969 when they landed their number four R B number 23 pop classic Sissy Strut. Sly Stone, whom we've discussed in several prior hit Parade episodes, shifted his psychedelic soul sound steadily toward funk over several albums and singles. On 1968's I Want to Take you Higher, Sly and the Family Stone were already pretty funky. Then at the end of 1969, Sly and the Family Stone dropped thank you for Letting Me Be Myself Again, a 1970 number one single built around bassist Larry Graham's cutting edge slap funk bass line. Thank you. A year later, Sly dropped his acclaimed There's a riot going on LP, which we discussed in our Hits of 71 episode. By then, the Family Stone had fully transitioned to a murky funk sound, as on their irresistible number one smash Family.
- [23:19]
B
Affair, It's a family Affair.
- [23:29]
A
Also in our hits of 71 show, I talked about Isaac Hayes, whose greatest funk innovation was arguably about song length. Hayes produced evocative slow burning cuts that took up most of the side of an album, such as his 12 minute version of the Dionne Warwick hit Walk on, by which Hayes punctuated with languid funk bass. Although Isaac Hayes breakthrough hit in 1971, his Oscar winning number one theme from the seminal blaxploitation film Shaft was one of his shorter Recordings. It kicked off with a relatively long instrumental funk jam that took up half the record before Hayes even started singing. The Shaft soundtrack also reached number one on the album chart, an indication that music fans were consuming Isaac Hayes. Simmering funk at length, Hayes LP topped the album chart for only one week, which could have been a fluke. But one year later, Curtis Mayfield affirmed the commercial viability of blaxploitation soundtracks with his own smash lp. And Mayfield, like James Brown, Sly Stone and George Clinton, had made a fairly radical musical shift from the 60s into the 70s. In the 60s 60s, Curtis Mayfield was a member of the Impressions, a group that started as a gospel inflected doo wop troupe showcasing the vocals of Jerry Butler. When Butler departed, Mayfield stepped forward as the group's de facto leader and main songwriter. For the Impressions, Mayfield penned some of the most indelible songs of of the civil rights era, including the R and B chart toppers Keep On Pushing, We're a Winner and the now standard People Get Ready so people Get Ready for.
- [26:15]
B
The Train to Join Picking Up Passengers.
- [26:23]
A
Already an iconic voice in 60s black pop by the end of the decade, Curtis Mayfield became a budding mogul, founding his own Curtum label first to showcase his final albums with the Impressions before he then transitioned into a solo career and a much funkier sound.
- [26:55]
B
He said don't worry.
- [26:58]
A
The early 1971 hit don't worry if there's a hell below, We're All Going to Go, which reached number three on the R B chart and number 29 on the Hot 100, found Mayfield adapting his socially conscious sound for the era of P Funk and Sly Stone film. It laid the groundwork for the soundtrack he would write and record a year later, not long after Isaac Hayes topped the charts with Shaft. Blaxploitation film directors like Gordon Parks, director of Shaft, and his son Gordon Parks Jr. Director of Superfly, liked having one artist record an entire soundtrack to give their film a signature sound. Hayes's Shaft album had consisted largely of his film score, with just a couple of vocal tracks like Theme from Shaft. But what Mayfield turned In for Parks JR's film Superfly was exceptional, a funk album with mostly vocal tracks that stood apart from the film and told a story all its own.
- [28:17]
B
This in the bed.
- [28:26]
A
From Pusher man, which set the tone for the album to the lead single Freddy's Dead, Superfly was an amalgam of funk and soul, rhythm and melody, story and groove. It didn't hurt that Superfly, the movie starring Ron o', Neal, was a Smash, the highest grossing blaxploitation film to that date. But Mayfield's album developed a life of its own, debuting on the album chart in late August 1972. A few weeks after the movie arrived. Curtis Mayfield's Superfly took eight weeks to reach number one on Billboard's top LPs chart, and it rode the chart for nearly a year. Superfly was more hit pack than any funk album before it, with Freddy's Dead reaching number four on the Hot 100 and the title track reaching number eight. Though Curtis Mayfield would never again reach the pop top 10, he spent the rest of the decade scoring hits on the R B chart like Future Shock, from the number one soul chart album Back to the World. And the trend hopping top 40 pop number 3 r b hit kung fu. More important, Mayfield had helped open the floodgates to a new wave of deep funk. At first, many of the big funk crossover hits came from Motown veterans of the 60s, Including the Temptations, who went to number one in late 1972, just weeks after Superfly broke with their bass Heavy Papa Was a Rolling Stone or Marvin Gaye, who melded his soul balladry with a sexy strut on the 1973 number one hit let's get It On. Come on.
- [31:24]
B
Let'S Get It On.
- [31:27]
A
And of course, Stevie Wonder, recently emancipated from his teenage Motown contract and producing albums independent of the Motown system. His early 70s tracks like Superstition and maybe youe Baby were built around thick keyboard lines from Stevie's clavineth. Moreover, acts that came from the smoother end of 70s R B tilted toward funk in their arrangements. The OJs, for example, were the premier vocal group of Philadelphia Soul, which was heavily orchestrated and generally much flutterier than funk. Nonetheless, you could hear the imprint of funk on the trio's highly syncopated hits. Songwriter John Whitehead called 1972's Backstabbers a number three pop number one R B hit. Quote a heavenly feel against that funk unquote what they do they smile in.
- [32:43]
B
Your face before the time they want to take your place.
- [32:51]
A
By 1974, the OJS had gotten even more bass, heavy on the rumbling for the Love of Money a number nine pop number three R B hit. Besides these artists that alluded to funk, it was now possible for groups that focused largely on the music to score both on the singles and album charts. One of the biggest of the early 70s was the Long Beach, California Latin funk combo war. In 1970. Their career had been reinvented when the former leader Of British group the Animals, Eric Burdon took WAR under his wing and scored the number three psychedelic funk hit Spill the Wine. After that rock and soul break breakthrough, by 1972, War began scoring on their own with hits like the number 14 slipping into darkness. That set up war for their 1973 magnum opus, the World Is a Ghetto. The album topped Billboard's top LPs in February 1973, hung around the chart all year and produced multiple hits including the number seven title track and the number two smash the Cisco Kid. The World Is a Ghetto wasn't just a singles collection. Wars LP connected with rock and pop fans as an album length statement. There were tracks with the sprawl of album oriented rock like the 10 Minute City Country City. At the end of 1973, Billboard named the World Is A Ghetto the year's number one album. It established War as regular 70s hitmakers. Years later they were still cracking the pop top 10 with the reggae tinged funk of why Can't We Be Friends? And their Most iconic single, 1975's horn inflected car anthem Low Rider. Another all funk combo, Jersey City's Cool and the Gang had a similarly auspicious emergence. Their 1973 album Wild and Peaceful generated three top 40 hits. The number 29 funky stuff, The number four hit Jungle Boogie, which decades later would be revived in Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction. And Hollywood Swinging, which also cracked the pop top 10 and went all the way to number one on the R B chart. But Cool and the Gang's path would take a very different turn later in the decade. We'll come back to them. By 1974 and 75, Funk was fusing with everything and everything it touched turned to gold. Godfather of Soul James Brown recorded his own blaxploitation style anthem the Payback.
- [37:57]
B
Hey Got, Got the Payback.
- [38:03]
A
Revenge, which was originally intended for the soundtrack of Hell up in Harlem. When the filmmakers rejected the song, Brown released it himself as a kind of shivery funk murder ballad. It not only returned him to number one on the R B chart, it cracked the pop top 30 and was his first gold single in two years.
- [38:32]
B
Get down With My God.
- [38:41]
A
The jammy Brooklyn combo man drill were a fusion of Latin jazz and rock with a funky edge previously too esoteric for the charts. By 73 and 74 they were regularly making Billboard's soul singles chart with tracks like Fence Walk and their composite truth LP cracked the pop top 30. Even deeper into jazz. Herbie Hancock's seminal funk fusion LP Headhunters reached number 13 on the pop album chart in early 1974. And as we discussed earlier this year in our R B Queens episode of Hit Parade, the Chicago band Rufus, fronted by Chaka Khan, finally broke big in the summer of 74 after pivoting away from rock toward pure funk, scoring their first big hit with the Stevie Wonder penned and produced Tell Me Something Good. The funk sound was not even limited to America. Average White Band, a Scottish instrumental group, produced an R B sound so credible on Pick up the Pieces, they topped the Hot 100, went top five on the soul singles chart, and their album AWB topped both the pop and R B lists in early 1975. Sharing space with Average White Band near the top of the album chart in February of 75 was an even quirkier funk super combo. Their album was called Simply Fire and they hailed from Dayton, Ohio. They called themselves the Ohio Players. The group had both great grooves and great gimmicks. What made the Ohio Players exceptional commercially was their marketing of funk as glossy, jovial party music best consumed an album at a time. And like Herb Alpert, Roxy Music or Chic, the Ohio Players knew the value of a gorgeous female model on a vinyl dust jacket. In 1973, when they broke out with the hit Funky worm, a number one R&B 15 pop hit, the Ohio Players were known both for the track's so called granny vocals delivered in character by Walter Juni Morrison. Think of this trope as the Madea of its day.
- [42:41]
B
Come on with it again fellas, Come.
- [42:43]
A
On with it and the COVID of the lp It Came From Pain, which featured a bald, whip wielding female dominatrix in a bikini. The Ohio Players repeated this sexy gambit on subsequent LPs called pleasure, ecstasy and Skin Tight, each of which sported a provocative cover and each of which sold better than the last. It all culminated in the late 1974 LP Fire, whose cover featured a buxom model clad in a fire helmet and not much else, holding a phallic hose. Sexy as it was, that LP jacket wouldn't have mattered if the album's title track hadn't been, well, the Bomb. Fire topped the Hot 100 in February 75, the same week the Fire album hit number one on top LPs. The song was no less funky than prior Ohio Players releases. But halfway through the 70s, the record buying and radio listening public was was, you might say, at its most funk, philic. And as gimmicky as those LP photos were, you couldn't hear a lubricious album cover on the Radio America loved the songs. Later in 75, taking advantage of their combustion momentum, the Ohio Players dropped a follow up LP Honey. Yes, there was a sexy cover and yes, it involved the sweet sticky stuff. The lead single was a disco fied funk fantasia called Love Roller Coaster. It too reached number one on the Hot 100 and the LP reached number two.
- [45:18]
B
Say what?
- [45:26]
A
As big as the Ohio players got in 1975, the year's more pivotal breakthrough came from an even larger scale, more commercially dominant hall of Fame level combo. They were based in funk, but more than funky. Their sound included jazz, soul, gospel, rock, folk, Afrobeat, and yes, disco. Indeed, they would navigate the peak disco years better than any of these other early 70s acts. But even when their music was smooth or slick, it was still funky and you might say, elemental. Earthy, windy, fiery. When we come back, Earth, wind and fire reinvent funk for the disco years. And as the 70s turn toward the 80s, some early 70s combos soften their sound to top the charts. Will they give up the funk? Even fake the funk? That doesn't have to be the way of the world. Non Sleep plus Listeners will hear hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Alicia Montgomery is the Executive producer and Derek John, the Supervising Narrative Producer of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show before I sign off this month. A quick promo if you're in the Columbia, South Carolina area, I'll be making a live appearance sponsored by the University of South Carolina's School of Information and Communications and the Richland Public Library on Thursday, October 20th at 6:30pm I'm speaking at the Richland Maine Public Library and it's free and open to the public. My talk will be about pop culture, music and South Carolina. And by the way, my discussion of a certain South Carolina musician may make it into a future Hit Parade episode. We'll add a link to the show page. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Melanfi.