Fred Wesley was born in Mobile Alabama on 4th July 1943. He’d played with Ike and Tina Turner but was about to start a job as the first black milkman in Mobile when he got the offer to join James Brown in 1967. You can say what you like about James Brown (and thanks to his recent death and the libel laws you probably could) but one of his greatest skills was as a band leader.
Like Bowie George Clinton or Kevin Rowland, JB always surrounded himself with top notch musicians and then used them as a spring board for his own immense talents. He had it all....His voice spanned the full range of Soul singing from “Huh” to “Ugh” and could go from The Willie John style Please Please Please Me pleading to spoken tracks like King Heroin.
He had the dancing, the showmanship, the capes, the sloganeering and the ability to make a phrase like “Let a man come in and do the popcorn” have almost the same cultural and political significance as “Say it loud I’m black and I’m proud.” But the funky foundations were built on the performances of supremely talented players, who had to take their musical cues from James Brown’s movements, his spur of the moment rearrangements, improvisations and a habit of fining musicians.
Brown wrote the words and gave the songs the star quality, but it was the bands who supplied the tunes and grooves which Brown would twist and pummel into funky shape. Wesley describes how Brown needed someone to translate and organise his ideas. “James Brown would give me horn things to write, but sometimes it would be incoherent musically and I would have to straighten it out, so to speak. When it came out of my brain it would be a lot of James Brown’s ideas and my organisation....he was the instigator”
James Brown pretty much invented the Funk style, and commercial success meant that he could run a parallel career for his backing band; releasing the records on his own People label and grab song writing and production credits as well. A marvellous mercenary idea and the records were great too. Different band names, same personnel. Essentially Fred Wesley on trombone, Maceo Parker on sax, Jimmy Nolen on guitar and Fred Smith on bass
Breakin’Bread came out in 74 and was credited as Fred Wesley and the New JB’s. Each of it’s 8 tracks is preluded by snippets of a 9th track of supper club schmaltz, where Fred will say a few words about the song. A kind of Funky Chicken in the basket.
I’ve never been afraid of cheese and these snippets only make me love the album more. As an album opener you can’t beat “Hi, this is Fred Wesley introducing our new album to you. It’s called Breakin’ Bread. We wanted the album to remind everybody of how it was with the folks back home, not only how good the food was but how we had a lot of fun, with all the groovy people, relatives and girlfriends. We hope it’ll bring back some pleasant memories and make you feel good”
And then with a trumpet fanfare it’s straight into the title track....and it’s about food, funk and good times; about cooking up hoecake bread on a skillet (it’s a corn bread traditionally cooked on a hoe or spade) dropping crumbs all over the place and having a good time.
It’s a great song and fits nicely in the tradition of Soul songs about Soul Food, such as Memphis Soul Stew, Barbara Acklin’s Gonna Bake Me A Man or Grits Ain’t Groceries by Little Willie John (who was one of James Brown’s idol’s).
The reason I like the album so much is it just sounds so warm and joyous. There’s a moment on the track Little Boy Black where after a line about “A hungry man can hardly think straight” there’s a shout to Wesley of “Show me how a hungry man plays”....and he does, playing a hustling, dancing, trombone shuffle, that sounds like it’s busking on a street corner for attention and spare change.
It’s a crazed riffling through some Starsky and Hutch type theme. Then “Show me how a full man plays” and Wesley plays a solo so full of rich, snoozy contentment that it’s virtually calling out to the waiter for brandy and cigars. The opening verse sounds like James Brown himself is sharing call and response vocal lines with Fred Wesley or at least adding an “Uh huh”, “Say it again” or “Tell me”.
There’s no chorus as such, but the link between verses is a soaring sweep of strings, brass and flute, that sounds like it should come from the closing credits of the best Blaxpoitation film that was never made. It’ll do me fine for a chorus anyway. As a title Rockin’ Funky Watergate anchors the album securely to it’s era, while Rice n’ Ribs gets the theme straight back to the kitchen.
The final track Step Child may need approaching with some caution though, depending on your sensibilities. For those with more jazz attuned ears than mine, it may indeed be a masterpiece. It may be a blistering work out with each horn part egging the other on, the musicians shouting encouragement to each other as they take turns to solo over crashing milk float drums and walking bass lines. To me though it’s a blether and squawk too far though and I just don’t get it.
Another of the interludes has Wesley thanking James Brown for “Giving me a chance to do my thing. Thanks to him there’s a little meat to go along with the bread”. Like I said the whole Brown /JB’s/ People enterprise kept the money rolling around the same group of people and a watchful George Clinton pulled the same stroke later by using the same pool of musicians and signing them to different labels as different bands.
George Clinton was a buy to let Funk landlord, with an expanding portfolio of often bewildering properties. Parliament, Funkadelic, Brides of Funkenstein, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, Parlet and The Horny Horns.
James Brown was a notoriously hard taskmaster and all his band line ups had a turnover of musicians that would make the Fall seem stable. Many of the graduates, leavers and runaways from the James Brown School (including Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley) would become part of George Clinton’s parallel universe. Fred Wesley himself saw James Brown as the creator and founder of the funk style but saw Clinton as the innovator who took it as far as it could go.
But then George Clinton would take everything as far as it would go anyway....it’s a frightening funky thought. I like Parliament a lot but within the George Clinton set up Wesley just was one part of the huge simultaneous explosion of garish colour and craziness. It was the sound of George Clinton’s hair. Fred Wesley’s Breakin’ Bread though was the sound of simpler pleasures....food and funk.
No comments:
Post a Comment