There is nothing more American than funk.
This past July 4, while San Francisco was being overwhelmed by fireworks, trombonist Fred Wesley—a vital member of James Brown’s band and a former musical director for the J.B.’s—celebrated his 80th birthday.
God bless him. Hit Me, Fred is still touring. Which is amazing when you run down musicians, hip-hop artists, and even pop music dilettantes who are no longer with us in this trifling 21st century. Wesley even did a stint in the Count Basie Orchestra. Those chops and that approach can be heard on his 1994 collaboration with San Diego soul-jazz luminaries The Greyboy Allstars on West Coast Boogaloo.
Make time and space for “Gravee,” it sparkles. Straight-ahead jazz awareness.
But let us begin at the top. Starting with his template arrangements with Brown and then organizing the horn sections for Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, and Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns.
“Four Play,” from that last group, with its drum hits, horn stabs, and cooler-than-a-popsicle thermal reading throughout, emanates from the P-Funk line-up in tow with Bootsy Collins producing and leading off with an ear-catching bass intrusion.
It’s a sample source code. Check “Packet Man” by Digital Underground for factual data.
All of these career inflection points helped to shape a new pop music aesthetic in the 20th century. As America prepares to acknowledge and celebrate’ 50 years of hip-hop, everyone knows that without the extensive James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic catalogs, hip-hop might not have ever been conceived.
And more importantly, financially monetized. Consider hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre, whose platinum-selling catalog from the mid-1990s contains a thunderous chunk of Parliament-Funkadelic’s music as sample origin. He’s a billionaire selling headphones now, and even has a Grammy named in his honor: The Dr. Dre Global Impact Award.
I think he deserves it, but uh. A piece of that award, a sliver of that billionaire’s financial means, belongs to Fred.
Did I mention Wesley is still touring at 80? 80!
That trombone momentum in song–starts slow rolling, catches up to you, and then passes in a blip–is a reliable, stable, color in the James Brown arrangement gamut. Wesley was the glue that held the tornado-like James and essential saxophonist Maceo Parker together. Wesley may not have been a Gladys Knight, but he was no mere Pip, either. He was the architect and intermediary of the Brown’s grand house of funk, and beyond.
We pay homage to his impact by selecting a few arrangements that highlight his multifaceted talent. Happy belated Birthday, Fred Wesley Jr:
JAMES BROWN, FRED WESLEY, & THE J.B.’S “PEOPLE GET UP AND DRIVE YOUR FUNKY SOUL (REMIX)” FROM JAMES BROWN: MOTHERLODE (MOTOWN/UMG RECORDINGS)
James Brown, much like Prince, left tons of expert musical ideas in the vaults. Motherlode, released in 1988 by Polydor, but since has been sold to several other labels, dips into untapped musical figures that for whatever reason didn’t make the cut the first time around.
“People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul (Remix)” got my ears popping the first time I heard it. An edited version appeared on the soundtrack to Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, but not this elongated, take-over-the-party form.
So gangster. In the bag, laid back and declarative. Like Fred Wesley and The J.B.’s got paid before they entered the studio, it’s that type of rehearsed ad-libbing atmosphere. Fred Wesley’s trombone tear relegates the rest of the horn section to stargazing quietude. In a long catalog of percolating grooves, this is James finding a new tint of Black excellence.
That acceleration of the blues, with Brown injecting “raise up, raise on up,” it just doesn’t happen without Fred Wesley stitching up the right patch of connective tissue.
(It’s a travesty of justice that Tobey Maguire struts down a Manhattan sidewalk in Spiderman 3 to this piece of sophisticated bump. In that jarring eggs benedict moment, Maguire takes a MJ-moonwalk-worthy moment into the white man’s overbite territory. Unfunkiest moment in cinema, ever.)
FRED WESLEY AND THE J.B.’S, “BLOW YOUR HEAD” FROM DAMN RIGHT I’M SOMEBODY (PEOPLE RECORDS)
One of the most influential tracks on hip-hop, especially with the Moog synthesizer at the top. Wesley told Red Bull Music Academy during an interview how it came about:
“Well, I cut the track without James. We used a New York studio band sometimes and that was recorded with the studio band. So James came in and he wanted to hear it. I thought he was gonna put his voice on it. He saw this Moog synthesizer, and he said [mimicking James’ voice], ‘What’s that?’ So we said, ‘Oh that’s a Moog synthesizer, Mr. Brown. We’re thinkin’ about using it on some of the tunes.’ He said, ‘How’s it sound?’ ‘Well, we went through some sounds with it.’ He said, ‘Turn it on! Put it on the track!” We said, ‘What? No, we were gon’-‘ ‘Turn it on! Put it on the track!’
“So he put it on the track. [imitates sound of synth intro] I said, ‘Oh lord, I hope he don’t leave this on, it’s messin’ up my track!’ [laughs] So he put it on THE WHOLE TRACK. And we could not believe it. We were like, it’s just an experiment, this will stay in the studio forever, no one will ever hear this. And what do you know, it got out on the album and the next thing you know it’s a hit all over the world. People request that tune now! You never know what the public gonna want. See, he’d take things like that and go to the bank with it. Just something that’s totally different. Nobody else would think to do it. And he would do it.”
THE J.B.’S, “TRANSMOGRAPFICATION” FROM HUSTLE WITH SPEED (UNIVERSAL RECORDS)
The tracks on the Hustle with Speed album are the type of hardscrabble joints where it’s not quite jazz, not exactly funk, some type of derivative of soul that reveal what an “embarrassment of riches” James Browns’ bands were.
Wesley is the feature of the four-minute track “Transmogrification,” and it’s the blues again, in this 4am, before the sun decides to arrive, walking home on the cold hard concrete-type of presentation.
Released in 1975, this was post-MLK, Malcolm X, JFK, and RFK, when Black America was up against the ramifications of Nixon’s bullshit world. Similar to those powerful funk-jazz releases popping off over at Detroit’s Strata-East imprint like Saturday Night Special by The Lyman Woodard Organization. To quote Succession, “the poison does drip through.”
You can hear it in the strings, the downward procession of the arrangement at the end of the track, as Wesley wails on into the ether.
As forlorn as that may be, “Transmograpfication” remains a documentary I’d buy a ticket to.
