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Rating: If the dying music market is, according to data, kept alive by the reissue market, then the Seattle label Light In The Attic should be considered the Alexander Fleming of records. Indeed, just as penicillin saved millions of lives in just a few years, so do the continuous and interesting archeo-musical discoveries of the label redraw the topography of the rock map from the '60s to today, bringing forgotten records back to light, all with commendable professionalism (packaging above average, remastering from original master tapes, inserts with a profusion of liner notes). Result: from a small reality in 2006, today Light In The Attic continues to open offices and hire people, and in 2013 it finally hit the jackpot with the Oscar for the documentary “Searching For Sugar Man” produced by them (in fact, it was the Seattle label that reissued Rodriguez's records in 2008).
This 2012 compilation is no exception, shedding light on a non-genre genre, one that I candidly admit I had never even heard or read about. Yes, because, as stated in the explanatory booklet: “What in the hell is Country Funk?”
No answer exists, one might say, since it is a posthumous term never used at the time, but one that perfectly summarizes the common thread that runs through the 16 tracks contained. Tracks born from a shared feeling, but conceived at the four corners of the States, by both whites and blacks, all together seasoning with slide guitars and southern and countryside humors, torrid funk rhythms laden with horns and deep bass lines. And vice versa. Whites who sounded more colored and groovy than James Brown and blacks on the porch drinking homemade-distilled whiskey, among reeds and straw hats. Unthinkable, but true.
Apart from socio-anthropological notes, it is the very high quality of the tracks that stands out prominently. Starting with the initial “L.A. Memphis Tyler Texas” by Dale Hawkins (conceived in the three aforementioned cities): soul horns, slide guitar phrasing, flute stirring things up. A similar effect is found in “Georgia Morning Dew” by Johnny Adams, more veered towards pure soul. All these blessed 16 tracks deserve mention, from a “Hawg Frog” directly from the Louisiana swamps, ecstatic and mystical like a black Dr. John (incidentally, paid tribute to by Johnny Jenkins, who transfigures the famous “I Walk On Gilded Splinters” into a country mass); an incredible fuzz/funk gospel like “Stud Spider” by Tony Joe White; an improbable Dennis The Fox who, in his “Piledriver”, seems like Tom Jones nailed under the sun of a blistering funky soul; “Bayou Country”, practically an Eagles song turned into a simultaneously black and white ballad by a certain Grit.
Finally, those hits from the '90s, strangely signed by three whites, yet I challenge you to guess that without having the album covers at hand. “Lucas Was A Redneck” by Mac Davis, with a deep voice, funk rhythm, soul strings, harmonica in full swing, and anti-redneck lyrics, perhaps the perfect syncretism of the compilation's two souls. “I’m Gonna Make Her Love Me” sexual anthem, rich and sensual. “Fire And Brimstone” by an unsuspecting Link Wray (yes, THAT Wray), an incredible crossover between almost hillbilly guitar, as black a rhythm as you can get, cavernous voice, a kind of Indian dance honoring Wray's Shawnee origins.
In short, the Nuggets of both country and funk.
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