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by Cousin Geoff
Hamilton Bohannon moved to Detroit in the 60s after Stevie Wonder hired him to be his drummer. After splitting from Stevie, he capitalized on his bandleading abilites and signed onto Dakar. Bohannon then put out some incredibly funky dance records in the early to mid 70s, among them this LP titled “Insides Out”.
This was one of the leftovers that I snatched up after it didn’t sell at auction, mainly because it’s on a crazy Korean bootleg label, like the rest of them were (I also took home a Korean pressing of Maggot Brain, so ghetto that it was listed as Funk Adelic on the typewritten label, and filled with misspellings and botched song titles). But I’ll take this copy of Insides Out until I can upgrade, because it’s a fun, funky, groovy record. I put it on for the first time while hanging out with my 6 month old daughter, and she bounced and squealed in her Johnny Jump-Up as I played the djembe while the record blasted. My wife was out so we jammed on and on. And that is what Bohannon does on this record, he picks up a groove, lays it down and just keeps it going.
He’s joined by fellow Detroiters LeRoy Emmanuel and Mose Davis of The Counts. The first side is like one big all-nighter, while the b-side is much more mellow, mostly love songs. It’s worth it to seek out this album for the a-side though, and you’ll see easily see the inspiration for modern electronic music. When you’ve got the funk and you’re holding it down, why let go?
Check out Foot-Stompin’ Music (about half of the 7:00 min. + track):
The Cousins drafted some records out of the old school rap batch we just listed. We took home about 20 each. I’ll probably tell you about some others, but I thought it would be good to let you hear a couple old school Detroit tracks I got, like the one below by Playskule.
I remember hearing this back in the day when I was in high school. They would play it on the radio on WJLB late at night on the weekends. These guys are still around, with a slightly different sound. Check them out here. This track, Slap Dat Ass, is a fine example of 90s Detroit electro booty rap.
listen:
This track by Papa J. Smoove on Hittin Home Records takes it back a little ways to 1990. I’m going to need some help on this one because I was in middle school when this record was hitting the clubs. This is that good old early boasting rap, with that distinct Detroit club sound.
listen:
Somebody gave me an old oak cabinet hi-fi record player a few days ago. I’d been looking for one to play 78s, and was quite excited when I plugged it in and the old thing cranked up and actually worked. It’s a Magnavox, the first company to make one like this.
We’ve had some 78s lying around for a while in the back office, and a few thousand in the warehouse, so I dug out a few hundred and brought them to the front for a drafting battle.
As one of the perks of owning a record store, Justin and I will take some home off most collections we buy. We call it “drafting”, we’ll go through ‘em all and agree to take the ones we want, sometimes one for one, sometimes five for five, but we have to agree on each deal. There are many tricks we’ve learned to try to hustle the other out of the good ones. Yesterday was no exception. We were at it for a good two hours, arguing, pleading, refusing, agreeing, playing ‘em, and finally ending up with about 20-30 each.
They were mostly blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and folk. My favorite was Grandpa Jones and His Grandchildren, Make Me A Pallet on King. I have a Furry Lewis version and a Mississippi John Hurt version and a few others, but I had never heard of Grandpa Jones. I also got an early Memphis Slim, a Hootie McShann, a Reverend M. Larry Franklin, and a great song about being a bum on Perfect. Justin got a very cool Jimmy Rodgers, an early Roy Milton Specialty, the original version of Rock Around the Clock and a bunch of other cool stuff that I tried to get too. It was fun, and a pretty even match.
