Funk Power!

This was the B side to a song called “Ready Made Family” by Creative Funk.

From what I’ve read, most of the band were from Jamaica, Queens, except lead singer Diane Jenkins, who was grew up in Brooklyn. The band consisted of bassist Gary Deberry, vocalists Diane Jenkins and Veedett Williams, guitarist Walter Etheridge, organist and trombonist Denzil Miller, bad-ass drummer Richard Currence, Andre Johnson on brass, and Michael Johnson on alto and tenor saxophone.

The members of this group were all between the ages of 17-21 when they released this song. It was originally a self-released project on their own label. They sold around 25,000 copies of this single in the NYC area, then Bell Records came along and picked up the label to sell the song nationally.

That’s probably how my father found out about this single. He had a nice collection of LPs, 45s and 8-tracks when I lived at home with my parents in Connecticut in my youth. I have them all at my place in The Bronx now and I dust off some of these classics from time to time…or I just find it on YouTube. Yeah, it’s easier.

I will never forget the feeling I had as a 6 year old kid listening to this. I probably thought it was the A side because I never listened to the other side. It had that much an effect.

The drum fill on the into scared the daylights out of me. At the end, there are chanting and screams. I was mesmerized. 

Then the pure energy of the track. Wow. 

It’s a non-stop funk workout. It was probably the first song that baptized me into the funk. I didn’t know at the time that James Brown had been doing this for like 5 years already and Sly has taken funk in a new direction. I also didn’t know that Funkadelic was making music like this at the same time.

It’s all good. I still think this track is incredible. I think I’m gonna practice this intro today. Let me see if I can still play this fill at my age.

 

Check this out!