Jazz funk

STN

sou'wester
Jazz funk mastercuts volume 2 is one of my most treasured albums, I bloody love it.
 

mms

sometimes
anything produced by the mizzell brothers practically.
esp that lush johnny hammond album shifting gears.
they made an unreleased album with marvin gaye....
children of forever - children of forever i like alot too.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Slightly tangential to the 80's R'n'B/Electro Soul but it's great.

Is this Jazz Funk? According to some YouTube comments it is. I'm not sure.
The Funk Masters - It's Over
 
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Client Eastwood

Well-known member
80's revive time on Dissensus : )

Yes STN check any of the Mastercuts comps if you can get hold of them for the Groove, Rare Groove, Jazz Funk. Also the Blaxploitation series but that was more Funk.

For a some good material on the matter check www.electrofunkroots.com or have a look around the Dj History website.

Ill try to come back later cos im at work atm. Cheers.
 

dHarry

Well-known member
Slightly tangential to the 80's R'n'B/Electro Soul but it's great.

Is this Jazz Funk? According to some YouTube comments it is. I'm not sure.
The Funk Masters - It's Over

a bit more disco-soul-pop-funk, non? gorgeous though (the sax solo sounds like it was recorded in another room). something strangely comforting about watching old records playing on the interweb...
 

DRMHCP

Well-known member
Oh yes Funkmasters...sounds of the long hot summer of 1983..I suppose it was pop jazz-funk.... The summer of 1983 to me was just about the time that hip hop ( ie "White Lines" crossing over, The Rake "Street Justice", Cuba Gooding "Happiness is just around the Bend" (sort of soul with hiphop production), more pop stuff like Freeez, Break Machine, and stuff that sat in the middle like Jazzy Dee "Get on Up" and Gary Byrd and "the Crown")joined jazz, funk and soul as part of the mix on British dance music scene.

Gotta lot of respect for Greg Wilson but to have him using anywhere outside London and the South East as significant in the development of the British funk, jazz and especially jazz-funk scene is quite an obscure and tenuous angle to take. Rather like using Essex for example as a way of talking about Northern Soul ie no doubt there were a few mod nights playing 60s soul but you'd hardly mention it in preference to the real scene in the North West or Yorkshire.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Wouldn't put Funkmasters in the JF bracket...or the 'good' one, for that matter...just my opinion, of course.

Jazz-Funk seemed like a great new angle for the scene back then, when seeing Level 42 in Brighton as we did before they had the hits really was exciting, would you believe. I don't blame the likes of Donald Byrd for cashing in. I mean, he probably made more in two years than he had in his whole 60s career, but so much of it sounds lame to these ears now they've heard Blue Note gems and all that jazz (which they hadn't at the time).

For me Herbie Hancock's 'Headhunters', 'Thrust' and 'Man-Child' really stand out, along with the Mwandishi band stuff, as exemplary 'jazz-funk' before the genre became classified (or a dancefloor phenomenon over here, at least).

The problem most of the time is that in the fusion the power of both is diminished - not funky enough, or jazzy enough. A lot of old jazz players came out to milk that cash cow and churn out supper club 'funk' for easy money.

Later, Defunkt blew the Pop stuff away. That was some serious shit.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Oh yes Funkmasters...sounds of the long hot summer of 1983..I suppose it was pop jazz-funk....
Yeah, I only stuck the Funkmasters in here because it didn't fit on the other thread and some comments on YouTube described it as Jazz Funk. It's quite disco as dHarry says.

I do love it though - sounds totally heavenly to me but probably precisely because it reminds me of that summer, being a delinquent and listening to pirate radio.
 

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
Gotta lot of respect for Greg Wilson but to have him using anywhere outside London and the South East as significant in the development of the British funk, jazz and especially jazz-funk scene is quite an obscure and tenuous angle to take. Rather like using Essex for example as a way of talking about Northern Soul ie no doubt there were a few mod nights playing 60s soul but you'd hardly mention it in preference to the real scene in the North West or Yorkshire.

nhaw man. he was a regular dj at legends in manchester in the early 80's where he played a mixture of latin, jazz funk and injected electro and 80's groove into the mix. the jazz dancers would be going crazy for his selections. imo, he certainly influenced the development of the northern dance scene and opening up the electronic stlyes.
 

STN

sou'wester
Bought the Johnny Hammond album mentioned up thread ('Gears'). Lovely stuff. Weird how there's all these sort of snatches of choir-like vocals and not really a 'lead vocal' as such. This can't be uncommon by any means but for some reason on this record it strikes me as really strange.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Donald Byrd's Places and Spaces is another classic Mizell Brothers production, very much in the vein of Gears.
 

STN

sou'wester
Will check it.

That tune Dominos is by Donald Byrd I think and that is a tune.

Sorry, the second line of this is one of the stupidest things I have ever written.
 

STN

sou'wester
In fact Dominos is on places and spaces anyway. God I'm a waste of space sometimes.
 

DRMHCP

Well-known member
nhaw man. he was a regular dj at legends in manchester in the early 80's where he played a mixture of latin, jazz funk and injected electro and 80's groove into the mix. the jazz dancers would be going crazy for his selections. imo, he certainly influenced the development of the northern dance scene and opening up the electronic stlyes.


I not saying he didn't have a big influence on the North Western dance scene but just that the vast majority of that scene was surely based around London and adjoining counties and I got the feeling that the article was trying to imply otherwise. Maybe just my take on the article.
 

DRMHCP

Well-known member
Yeah, I only stuck the Funkmasters in here because it didn't fit on the other thread and some comments on YouTube described it as Jazz Funk. It's quite disco as dHarry says.

I do love it though - sounds totally heavenly to me but probably precisely because it reminds me of that summer, being a delinquent and listening to pirate radio.

Same here along with going to my first Caister (and Pete Tong* not reading our request out on Caister Radio) and Bournemouth weekenders, coachtrips to the Goldmine, Flicks, regular nights at Windsor Safari and the Rio, JFM and Horizon, dodgy "If it Moves Funk It" sunstrips, Robbie on Saturdays on Radio London, Bluebird Records and Slough Imports, the original "Get Down Saturday Night", "Music" by D-train, "Toda Menina Baiana" by Gilbert Gil, everyone seeing Maze in London and wearing the t-shirts, Chris Hill breaking Sister Sledge's already years old album track"Thinking of You", the first 2 or 3 Streetsounds compilations etc etc bloody great year...

* its interesting what a lot of the big post-1988 djs were doing around then I know i saw Nicky Holloway a couple of times at the Special Branch around then think Danny Rampling was involved too not as a dj though , Colin Hudd (wheres he been since about 1989?)was resident at Flicks, Paul Oakenfold used to appear at Weekenders on the radio doing record company stuff, saw Johnny Walker djing at the East Arms, Hurley some Fridays around then and Brandon Block used to just be one of the clubbers from one of the West London tribes (the Hounslow something I think ).
 
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