News & Updates — soul/funk

Drawing: Steve Kraków aka Plastic Crimewave. If anyone is going to give the late, great Ralph MacDonald a run for his money as "most recorded percussionist of all time" it could very well be "Master" Henry Gibson (or so he claims, anyway). A Chicago native, he honed his chops in the streets and studios of the Windy City. He cut hundreds of sessions, including some early jazz dates with the likes of Sonny Stitt and Ahmad Jamal. He joined Odell Brown & the Organ-izers, recording for the Chess subsidiary Cadet. He was the featured percussionist on Donny Hathaway's hit "The Ghetto"...

Since the release of Big Mean Sound Machine's fourth album Runnin' For The Ghost, released in April on Peace & Rhythm (North & South America) and Blank Slate (Europe & Asia), the band has continued touring relentlessly, winning new fans every time out with their avant-afro-psych-funk. The album has gotten a lot of radio play and excellent support from publications & blogs such as Downbeat, Afropop Worldwide, Okay Player, Global A Go-Go, Afrobeat Blog, Funkish, Grateful Web, Brooklyn Vegan and more. Word on the street is that this is one of critic's favorite albums of the year. We're also pleased...

Born on this day in 1935 was the great Joe Tex! (later known as Yusuf Hazziez). From Texas, he played bari sax in a high school band and sang in church. He developed a style of part-preacher, part-rapper and made some funky, funky tunes (nasty ones like "I Gotcha!" and "Give The Baby"), and made a lot of "answer" songs to add to the fun. After some amateur-contest success at the Apollo Theater, he signed to King in '55 but struggled for a decade to make any hits. He garnered a big rep as a crazy live act. James Brown stole...

The queen of break-beat harp-jazz, Dorothy Ashby grew up in Detroit. Her father was a jazz guitarist and she went to high school with Donald Byrd and Kenny Burrell. After college she gigged around as a pianist in the early '50s while also dedicating time to mastering the harp. By the mid-'50s she was playing bop as a harpist and recorded several albums for Prestige, Atlantic and the Chess family of labels from the late '50s into the '70s. Her classic 1970 album The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby featured her on the Japanese koto. Her tunes have been sampled by hiphop...

A happy birthday shoutout to free jazz reedsman Byard Lancaster, a dude who always had a funky side to him! He came out of Philly and spent some time in Boston before participating in the NYC free jazz revolution, playing often with drummer Sunny Murray. He worked with Elvin Jones, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra and Bill Dixon in the '60s, as well as releasing his own 1968 classic It's Not Up To Us album (with Sonny Sharrock). The '70s found him releasing a string of what are now "rare groove classics" for the French label Palm and others (with Khan...