Detroit Sex Machines

What can be said about the Detroit Sex Machines two seven-inch singles? It’s rare that an independent funk group could record and release one high-caliber seven-inch. But two? Well, Carleen and The Groovers managed the feat. As did Mickey and The Soul Generation. How about cross-pollination of musical genres though? Again, Carleen and Mickey lead ensembles that could vamp with the best of them, and still lean leftwards to embrace the psychedelic. How about accomplishing these feats while attending high school? Now the Detroit Sex Machines stand alone.

When uber-collector Phillipe Lehman rediscovered and reissued the Sex Machines first seven inch in 2001, the funk community wondered the obvious: could these two tough-as-Bootsy-Collins?-18-year-old-fingernails tracks be new recordings by Phillipe and his Desco/Soul Fire cohorts. The idea was plausible enough. But Phillipe himself, when confronted with the theory, laughed, “If I could record funk this good, it’s all I’d do.”

The group’s second 45, rediscovered some time later, demonstrated that though the band could funk with JBs-like precision, they could stretch, no pun intended, into territory not oft-explored by a band so obviously taken in by James Brown’s rhythmic revolution. And the Godfather’s most psychedelic venture, the Sho Is Funky Down Here album, sounds tame compared to the Sex Machines five minutes of fury. This band was intense. The fact that their music remained undiscovered by the Deep Funk community for so long is a crying shame.

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Kashmere Stage Band

In Houston, Texas, Conrad O. Johnson pursued a lofty goal with his stage band at Kashmere High School, a predominantly black school located in the city’s north end (referred to in Houston as “Kashmere Gardens”). He wanted to lead not only the best high school stage band in Texas, but the best high school stage band in the world. Our opinion is that he succeeded, and we’re thankful that he thoroughly documented his band’s progress, so that we can present to you the Kashmere Stage Band’s musical legacy.

In the mid ’60s through the ’70s, in Houston’s bustling metropolis, Johnson (known by many as “Prof.”) made a career of producing leagues of musicians capable of playing competitively with any band in the nation, professional or otherwise. More than simply a product of the big band era (his childhood friends and early musical peers included legends like Illinois Jacquet and Arnette Cobb), Johnson bestowed a living history to his young students. And while many band directors simply tolerated the use of popular rhythms in their stage bands, Johnson embraced the funk movement that enveloped his kids. He encouraged composition – both by writing original funk songs for his band to perform and by allowing the Kashmere Band to play songs written by band members.

Never one to succumb to novelty, Johnson didn’t simply throw funk beats beneath a jazz song to please his kids. He instructed his band to play funk because he respected the funk idiom in the same way he respected jazz. Nor did he simply borrow charts from progressive big banders such as Herman, as was common amongst high school bandleaders from the era. He arranged nearly every one of his band’s songs himself, and those that he didn’t arrange he allowed his students to arrange. He worked year-round with his eager charges, constantly pushing the limits as to what their band could accomplish. He built the Kashmere Stage Band from scratch and his winning combination of powerful funk rhythms beneath expertly executed jazz solos quickly influenced those bandleaders directly within his sphere and those he met – and almost always bested – in competitions across the world.

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Soul Seven

In 1969, at a small historically black school called Bishop College in Dallas, Texas, an Assistant Band Director had an idea for six students he led in the school’s Ambassador Marching Band – why not record two of the hardest-hitting funk songs of all time? Wendell Sneed, a jazz drummer par excellence who caught the funk bug around 1967 from soon-to-be bandmate Mike McKinney, assembled The Soul Seven from a multi-talented bunch attending Bishop on music scholarships. With the help of old friend Roger Boykin, another Bishop alumnus (1963), Sneed released his project on the fledgling Soultex label.

A third song from the session – a heavy duty cover of the Stax/Volt stalwarts’ “Grab That Thang” retitled “Southside Funk” – didn’t find a release until 2001, as Now Again Records’ parent company Stones Throw seven inch and as part of The Funky 16 Corners compilation. “We would take someone’s song and put our own twist to it,” trombonist and on-stage leader Charles Hunt remembers. Distilling the Soul Seven experience into one sentence, he adds, “We wanted to put out the funkiest music possible and hopefully get some gigs.”

While The Soul Seven certainly achieved Hunt’s goal, their live performances were often recorded – if at all – using one microphone, with a 1/4” reel to reel moving at the slowest speed possible. Thankfully Boykin and Sneed booked The Seven at their independently financed and produced South Dallas Pop Festival on the evening of June, 22nd 1970, and hired a professional recording engineer to document the night’s proceedings. Alongside friendly rivals The Apollo Commanders and The Black Maffia, The Soul Seven revue turned out an intense set that highlighted guests Eddie Purrell, Monica Harris and The Voices of Time and Mama Dee… and of course found the band doing what they did best – rocking the show with heavy, heavy funk.

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Ebony Rhythm Band

Though they released a wealth of material under the name Ebony Rhythm Funk Campaign, the Ebony Rhythm Band only released one 7″ single – the devastating “Soul Heart Transplant” on LAMP Records. Now-Again, in association with Herb Miller, released their late 60s recordings – discovered at Les Ohmit’s Indianapolis-based studios in the late 90s – in 2004.

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L.A. Carnival

The Midwest is full of surprises such as the L.A. Carnival – one of the great, “undiscovered-in-their-time” funk ensembles.

Now-Again’s LP – Pose A Question, issued thirty three years after the L.A. Carnival recorded it – stands as a definitive indication to the breadth of the Midwest funk sub-strata, and there are still hundreds of other undiscovered recordings slowly disappearing into the earth with their original owners and makers. This document should be the crying sentinel, it shall announce to the world that funk is as American an art form as Blues, Gospel and Jazz and it is right time to stop ignoring and discounting it. Fleeting glimpses of this strange animal will never be enough, for we need engrossed exposure in order to fully understand its beauty and relevance.

On his deathbed, Roger Patterson denounced his scintillating film of a fleeting Bigfoot as a fraud, momentarily smashing the hopes of the faithful and elating the naysayers. Yet there are still staunch disciples of the wild creature and it has firmly concretized itself in the American folk patchwork. The emerging being that is unknown funk will never have last breath vituperations because it is itself a breathing and vital organ in the body of American music. Antipodeans beware, this is music to be believed in.

-Dante Carfagna

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