Recommendations......hmmmm. This isn't Average White Band stuff but
if you want some funk try these: recently I pick up 'Stellar Fungk: The
Best of Slave featuring Steve Arrington'. Songs like 'Slide' (a classic
funk song with razor guitar), 'Wait For Me', 'Weak in the
Knees', Just a Touch of Love' definitely have a solid funk
bass/horns/keyboard sound (late 70s early 80s they were young and
innovative). The Best of George Duke is a decent buy--although there are
only 3 'real' funk tracks on it-- 'Dukey Stick', 'Reach for It' and (my
personal favorite)'Mothership Connection'(which he cowrote with Bootsy
Collins). Parliament also recorded this song but George Duke's version
is more refined (IMHO) yet maintains spontaneity and rawness. The
Parliament version sounds raw--period. After that the rest of the album
is more early 80's r&b with some tracks he did from his projects with
Stanley Clark. Another good 'best of' artist to have is Teena Marie.
Particularly the stuff she did while working with Rick James. She has
several 'best of' albums out there but I wouldn't waste my money unless I
knew for sure that it has the full version of classic hits such as "Sucka
For You Love", "Behind the Groove" "It Must Be Magic", "Square Biz"
"Portuguese Love" and "Casanova Brown". Some people would classify her as
r&b but her music is definitely funk/r&b/jazz/latin based. Small warning,
Motown has some 'classic bargain buy' stuff out there. Avoid it. Most of
those albums are the short radio versions--not the original album
versions. The prices are cheap (usually $5-6.00US) but cheap is what you
get.
Mind you, since I've been checking out this list, it seems that each
individual has their own definition as to what is acid jazz, funk,
straight jazz, etc.......I guess this is on genre that will not be
classified. Peace.
denise