Funk Jazz

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Funk jazz is a sub-genre of jazz fusion and is basically the blending of funk rhythms with jazz improvisation. Some classic funk jazz artists include The JBs, The Meters, The Brecker Brothers and Soulive. At JMA, additional funk jazz music can be found in the Fusion, Funk, Soul Jazz and Acid Jazz genres.

funk jazz top albums

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THE METERS Look-Ka Py Py Album Cover Look-Ka Py Py
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4.89 | 8 ratings
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MARCUS MILLER The Ozell Tapes: The Official Bootleg Album Cover The Ozell Tapes: The Official Bootleg
MARCUS MILLER
4.80 | 5 ratings
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HERBIE HANCOCK Head Hunters Album Cover Head Hunters
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4.40 | 61 ratings
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HERBIE HANCOCK Thrust Album Cover Thrust
HERBIE HANCOCK
4.37 | 39 ratings
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MARCUS MILLER M² Album Cover
MARCUS MILLER
4.60 | 5 ratings
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HERBIE HANCOCK Flood Album Cover Flood
HERBIE HANCOCK
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THE CRUSADERS Chain Reaction Album Cover Chain Reaction
THE CRUSADERS
4.67 | 3 ratings
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GABOR SZABO Macho Album Cover Macho
GABOR SZABO
4.50 | 5 ratings
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DONALD BYRD Kofi Album Cover Kofi
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SOULIVE Up Here Album Cover Up Here
SOULIVE
4.62 | 3 ratings
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MARCUS MILLER Silver Rain Album Cover Silver Rain
MARCUS MILLER
4.50 | 4 ratings
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SOULIVE Doin' Something Album Cover Doin' Something
SOULIVE
4.40 | 6 ratings
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CLIFFORD JORDAN Soul Fountain

Album · 1970 · Funk Jazz
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Mssr_Renard
This album of Jordan must be his least inspiring. I can't say it's really bad, but it's rather easy. No bop here but mostly r&b tunes.

It sounds like a mainstream album and maybe an attempt at a album-hit, but I cannot say it really moves me. The songs are all too short to feature great soloiing or improvisations. It's just a collection of song

The musicians on this album are all highly regarded and especially side two (recorded on a different date with different musicians) saves this album. The composition Retribution (cowritten by Julian Priester and Abbey Lincoln), taken from Lincoln's Straight Ahead album from 1961 is strong.

Maybe it's because I'm not a big fan of James Brown, and 'I Feel Good' is an okay song, but Clifff can do so much better than this.

The album-cover I like and I like Senor Blues of Horace Silver, so at least this albums is not a total loss.

DAVE LIEBMAN Light'n Up, Please!

Album · 1977 · Funk Jazz
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js
Dave Liebman is probably one of the top saxophonists to come out of the 70s scene. He has played with greats including Elvin Jones, Chick Corea, Miles Davis and so many more, but even the greats have an off day, and for Liebman that would be this album, “Light’n Up Please”. Its not a terrible album, but far from a great one for sure. Initial problems occur just looking at the cover. Who does a photo op in the back of a Ford Pinto? Not only was it a complete crap car, but if someone had struck the car‘s infamous backside, Dave and his lovely missus would have surely gone up in flames. Then on the back cover you get a sticker telling you that the track listing on the album back cover is incorrect and you are to read the record label to get the correct listing. We haven’t even placed the album on a turntable and we are already off to a bad start, ha.

Apparently “Light’n Up” was Dave’s shot at funk jazz, a hugely popular style at that time, but this just isn’t Dave’s forte. He even enlisted JBs member Pee Wee Ellis to help out, but it didn’t work. To the novice this album may sound okay, but just play it back to back against the JBs, the Meters or the Headhunters and you will hear that something is just not quite right. Part of the problem is in the rhythm section. The cuts that feature Tony Saunders on bass and Jimmy Strassburg on drums are the better ones, but the ones that feature Jeff Berlin on bass and Al Foster on drums suffer. Jeff is a good prog and fusion bassist and Al is top notch in post bop and fusion, but as a funk team, they just don’t lock with each other, and Dave doesn’t lock with them either. Dave plays his usual flowing post bop lines instead of the short punchy riffs that make funk work. I’m reminded on Monk’s famous advice to Steve Lacy, ‘make the drummer sound good’.

Dave’s song writing on here is not great either, for supposedly being funk tunes, a lot of the music is just clumsy. One of the better cuts, “Chicken Soup” is just a straight up rip off of Maceo’s “The Chicken”, yet Dave puts his name on the song writing credits. The best song on the album, “Tranquility of the Protective Aura” is the only song not written by Liebman, instead it was penned by keyboardist Harold Williams and it is a luxurious piece of Ravelish exotica. Once again, this isn’t a really terrible album , but if you really love good funk music, you will hear the weaknesses pretty quickly.

FRED WESLEY Damn Right I am Somebody (wth the JB's)

Album · 1974 · Funk Jazz
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js
Damn Right I am Somebody’ is an excellent jazzy funk release recorded by the JB’s during their second peak after reforming under the leadership of tromboner par excellance, Fred Wesley. Wesley’s records usually reflect the style of the people he is working with at the time, in this case that would be one of James Brown’s very best early 70s ensembles. This is hard grooving James style funk with the characteristic slight swing feel and Afro-Cuban accents from conga player Johnny Griggs. Unfortunately, the musicians on here are not listed, but some givens include Jimmy Nolan on guitar, Maceo Parker on sax, John Starks on drums and James Brown on incidental vocals. If you have ever seen Eddie Murphy’s hilarious send- up of James’ nonsense syllable improvisations, you will love album opener ‘Damn Right I am Somebody’ where Brown unleashes a constant stream of onomatopoeia crazyness.

If you know your early hip-hop samples and loops you will know that this is the JB’s album with the synthesizer. Some references claim that James is the synth player, while others list vocalist Bobby Byrd. Either way, the persistent synth noodling on several cuts adds an excellent exotic flavor to this record. All the songs on here are great, but one stand out is ‘I’m Payin Taxes, What am I Buyin’, where Jimmy Nolan provides a killer guitar riff that won’t quit. Jimmy Nolan is the god of rhythm guitar .. word.

Most of the songs on here are classic JB’s funk except for ‘Make Me what You Want Me to be’ which is a classy orchestrated soul-jazz pop number, likewise their lover’s groove re-make of Marvin Gaye’s ‘You Sure Love to Ball’ sets a different mood as it closes the album and turns down the lights for the rest of the evening.

JOHNNY VIDACOVICH Johnny Vidacovich, June Yamagishi & George Porter Jr. : We Came To Play

Live album · 2003 · Funk Jazz
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boredop
This release documents the long running series of weekly gigs led by drummer Johnny Vidacovich. Since the early 2000s Vidacovich has been assembling an ever-changing cast of musical co-consipirators for nights of unstructured jamming (originally at the Old Point Bar in New Orleans, and now at the Maple Leaf Bar for many years). There is rarely a set list but there are always great moments.

The most common early lineup of "The Trio" is heard here - Johnny V. with June Yamagishi on guitar and George Porter Jr. on the bass. As sidemen these three have played with a who's who of New Orleans music royalty - The Meters, James Booker, Professor Longhair, The Wild Magnolias, Henry Butler, Irma Thomas, and various Nevilles and Marsalises. And they have made waves outside of the city too: Vidacovich with John Scofield and Mose Allison, Porter with Tori Amos, and Yamagishi as one of Japan's most celebrated guitarists before he relocated to New Orleans. It's clear from their backgrounds that this group can make something from nothing.

The music heard on We Came To Play was recorded on a Wednesday night in the summer of 2002 and is representative of a typical trio set. Five long improvised jams, ranging from 8 to 15 minutes in length, with one foot in jazz and the other deep in the funk. Vidacovich and Porter keep the rhythm grounded in the New Orleans funk and second line feel. Although there's plenty of solo space for each player, there are also long passages of pocket-based jamming in which the trio just rides the groove. At times the jams have a dark, swampy texture that contains a faint echo of Bitches Brew, but put through a New Orleans filter. You can almost feel the sweat dripping off the CD.

All three players are at the top of their game. Yamagishi slashes and burns on his guitar solos and is as funky as they get as a rhythm guitarist, and Johnny V. floats across the groove like a butterfly and stings in his solos like a bee. But it's especially great to hear Porter stretching out in extended solos, something he didn't often do on record with the Meters or as a session player. He has tremendous chops of course, but he solos here with economical tastefulness, never letting flashiness compromise the groove. The album also includes two examples of Vidacovich's half-sung, half-spoken vocals on "Is It Nature's Rock and Roll?" and "Be Careful Who You Idolize," two examples of his poetry which pop up often on the trio gigs. Porter growls backup vocals in the background while Johnny reminds the listener to "Be careful who you idolize, use caution when you pick a guru - look inside for the true you!"

There's nothing particularly innovative or earth-shaking here. Rather, it's the sounds of another humid, funky night in the Big Easy, the city where the music never stops. The Johnny Vidacovich trio gigs will soon reach their 20 year anniversary, and after all these years, one thing hasn't changed: these guys came to PLAY.

BLACK TIE BRASS Mostly Covered

EP · 2019 · Funk Jazz
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js
I would imagine more than a few young jazz musicians have noticed Snarky Puppy’s meteoritic rise to success and wondered if that could possibly happen to them too. Most jazz musicians assume that they will earn a modest living at best, and more than likely will be supporting themselves with a day job in another profession. Possibly the Snarky crew is more surprised than anyone that they are now traveling the world and playing the big shows like rock stars. What happened to them wasn’t luck though, not only did they work hard to get where they got, but they also put together a very youthful concoction of pop, dance and jazz that has appeal far outside the jazz world and into the lucrative world of the college party circuit and the international jam band scene. There is probably plenty of room for some more bands in this scene, and Black Tie Brass is one band that may have that potential.

Black Tie are doing their own thing and really don’t sound much like the Puppies, but there is a similar formula at work here, a youthful brass band with jazz chops and dance floor sensibilities. Yes, these guys could be heading ‘straight to the top’. “Mostly Covered” is their second release and is more like an EP than an LP due to its abbreviated length, but there is enough here for anyone to get a good taste for what they do. The album opens with three originals including the fast JBs shuffle of “Night Moves” and the hip-hop flavored “Sunshine”. All of the songs feature punchy horn arrangements and short to the point solos, the overall feel is more like a pop band than a jazz band, but the boys can lay it down when they want to.

The rest of the record finishes out with three well known covers including Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. Trumpeter Randolph Smith plays the melody with a mute, possibly in tribute to Miles’ version of Michael’s “Human Nature”. These guys are still a little green around the gills, but give them time to build their chops with endless gigs and roadwork and this could be the next jazz group to find larger success outside the jazz world without selling out their jazz sensibilities.

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