Finally back in print – the 7” box set that Egon issued in 2003 as a companion piece to the essential Stones Throw deep funk anthology The Funky 16 Corners. Out NOW.
In 2000, deep funk anthologies were of the shoddy, bootleg variety: you know, the kind that featured new photos of models playing up the funk buffoonery of overgrown afros, bell bottoms and platform shoes. Then came the first fully licensed album of its kind – The Funky 16 Corners anthology, released on Stones Throw Records in 2001 – and, for the funk heroes and heroines that had recorded in the wake of James Brown in the 60s and 70s, everything changed. It’s not too much of a reach to say that companies like Numero Group, Jazzman Records, Light In The Attic – and their marvellous reissues from the past decade – might not have been had it not been for The Funky 16 Corners’ success.
In 2003, two years after The Funky 16 Corners’ release, Egon revisited the deal that sent him on the chase for licensing agreements in the first place: a box set of 7” singles that Traffic Entertainment Group’s president Joe Mansfield had sent him on. The result was Soul 7 – a 7” box set of seven seven inch singles from the 60s and 70s. Some had seen their songs featured on The Funky 16 Corners; some had been up for consideration, but hadn’t made the final cut.
Soul 7 was, as Egon wrote in his original liner notes, “a companion piece to The Funky 16 Corners… a chance to stretch out, and dig a lil’ deeper into the backgrounds and musical legacies of some of the pieces that define the genre that Keb Darge dubbed deep funk.” Almost ten years after Soul 7’s original release, the results of that investigation still sound fiery and fresh. Download an example – the key New Orleans funk of Ernie and The Top Notes Inc. – below.
Get: Soul 7 by subscribing to Now-Again Deluxe at Drip.fm
Download: Ernie and The Top Notes, Inc. “The Dap Walk.”
