Isaac Hayes<\/strong><\/a> funk feel; it would have worked nicely on the soundtrack of any number of blaxploitation films. \u201cFunky & Some\u201d has some tasty guitar work, punctuated by righteous horn charts and a jazzy solo from Wesley.<\/p>\nWhen the mood is dialed down, it’s less effective. An ill-advised cover of Gilbert O’Sullivan<\/strong>‘s maudlin \u201cAlone Again (Naturally)\u201d evokes the feel of being trapped in an elevator in 1975. But most of the covers work: \u201cBack Stabbers\u201d is a complete \u2013 and wholly successful \u2013 reinvention of the O’Jays<\/strong>‘ hit. And \u201cEverybody Plays the Fool\u201d keeps the flute chart from The Main Ingredient<\/strong>‘s original, adding some tasty female vocal ensemble work \u2013 and Wesley’s horns \u2013 to the showy, varied arrangement.<\/p>\n\u201cGet on the Good Foot\u201d is every bit as exciting as it ought to be; the players are firing on all cylinders. The bass work is especially note-perfect. \u201cSecret Love\u201d is straight big-band jazz, showing that Wesley could have taken the band in a Vegas direction and found great success. Not a drop of funk in it, \u201cSecret Love\u201d showcases the expertness of Wesley and the JBs as players. \u201cSeulb\u201d is another wonder, swinging in a big way, aiming for \u2013 and hitting \u2013 the sweet spot between BB King<\/strong> and Stevie Wonder<\/strong>. \u201cYou’ve Got a Friend\u201d answers the question: What would the Carole King<\/strong> song sound like, arranged as an instrumental by Billy May<\/strong> or Neil Hefti<\/strong>? Damn good, that’s how.<\/p>\nThe softer jazz mood of \u201cSweet Loneliness\u201d shows that Wesley and the band could in fact be highly emotive on such numbers; it’s a romantic piece with understated Rhodes work throughout. With its evocative-of-Isaac-Hayes title, \u201cTransmograpification\u201d is another effective instrumental that begs for a movie; the track’s combination of synthesizer and horns works seamlessly.<\/p>\n
Sporting only one weak track out of thirteen, The Lost Album Featuring \u201cWatermelon Man\u201d<\/em> is highly recommended to jazz, soul, funk, swing, blues and r&b fans. Others may well dig it too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"File this one under Great Lost Albums of the 70s. As the story goes, the tracks that make up The Lost Album Featuring \u201cWatermelon Man\u201d were recorded by James Brown‘s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30475,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/30475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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