paul secor

I have a copy of that Johnny Woods 45 stored in the garage. I'll have to look for it. The Rounder (ex-Revival) Fred McDowell LP that he plays on is very good also.

A long time favorite.

That's something that I wouldn't have imagined, but it was an interesting read.

Clarence Williams: "You're Bound To Look Like a Monkey": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDDpEHAeWvo

Axel Rose Rose Stone Stone Phillips

Sly was years after 'Out of sight'. And I know you know Alvin Robinson's recordings which were before that. And the Mar-Keys were the beginning. The whole of Stax would have been zilch without them. Funk, to a large extent, represented the resurgence of jazz in popular black music and the vocalists contributed little to that (except to the extent that they - like JB and a few others - were musicians too). MG A lot of people had an influence on what came to be called funk. You could bring up Horace Silver, Bobby Timmons, and Cannonball as influences. I still think that the rural quality of Otis' music wasn't something found in most funk. I would agree with you that Al Jackson, Jr. had an influence on funk. This an argument that could go on and on and never be resolved. I agree with much of what you say. As far as this thread goes, both of us have outlived Otis, Al Jackson, Jr., Bobby Timmons, and Cannonball - for whatever that's worth.

The Flatlanders Pure Prairie League Plain Jane

Possibly so, but I think that James Brown and Sly had more to do with that. To my ears, Otis' music was more rural than most funk.

That is an over-simplification. There was something about Bach's music that resonated with 1960s sensibilities. There were the Swingles, Jacques Loussier, Walter Carlos, plus lots of baroque influences in rock/pop music, film scores, etc. The baroque sound was everywhere. There was also a healthy irreverence to "classical" music during that period, and these records were a way of saying both that the music endures, but nothing is sacred. I would also argue that, from my experience in the US, the Swingles were a gateway into classical music just as much as they may have been a gateway out. I agree with the last sentence. It didn't work for me, but I think that it may have been the case for others.

As I said, if you're unfamiliar with the music, you can't beat the price on that set. I've been listening to the music for long enough that sound can tend to be more of an issue to me than it would be for some others.

Ransom Knowling, who played bass on many blues records, played tuba (brass bass) on a 1942 Doctor Clayton session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdYc3Ba3lc Thanks to my friend Doug Price, who hipped me to this.