Various - Midwest Funk: Funk 45's From Tornado Alley (Now-Again)

Preoccupations tend to come fast and frequent to the typical music fan. My latest was brought about last week by the confluence of a Parliament-Funkadelic concert and coming across this comp in a used bin. It’s an excellent gateway disc into the Now-Again catalog, a funk and soul reissue outfit stewarded by one Egon Alapatt. The label is also an offshoot of the larger hip-hop imprint Stones-Throw, home to MadLib and MF DOOM among others. The cuts here, originally assembled by the UK Jazzman label, have special significance to my own situation given their specific regional focus. There’s lots of cribbing and downright stealing from the popular playbooks of James Brown, Funkadelic and the Meters, but by and large the blatant thievery is put to good ends. Exemplary funk bass ostinatos abound and the general tilt toward instrumentals works well as funk lyrics have a tendency to tip over into the inane. Break beats are populous too and nearly every cut mines the pocket for memorable grooves. Even relative clunkers like Messengers Incorporated’s “Soulful Proclamation” and the Wallace Brothers’ “What-cha Feel is What-cha Get”, which mires in a weighty rhythmic roux of honking horn unisons, exhibit moments of interest. On the flip, the Dayton Sidewinders’ “Funky in Here” and The Soul Tornados’ “Boot’s Groove” deliver some of the hardest, most happening funk I’ve heard in awhile. The standout though to my ears is a seven-and-a-half minute tape snippet of Billy (Joe) Holloman, a Twin Cities B-3 organ legend fronting his trio in ’72. Other Now-Again regional comps cover 45rpm troves from Texas, Florida and the Carolinas to a similarly successful extent. I’ve made it a mandate to snap them up and so far haven’t felt even a twinge of buyer’s remorse.