Spreadin' Honey
We got 103rd Street Rhythm
By Chris Morris
During South by Southwest in Austin last year, I had one of those oh-man moments. I was standing in line for an afternoon gig at Antone’s when a friend elbowed me and nodded his head in the direction of a black guy on the pavement nearby. I eyeballed his conference badge, and discovered I was in the presence of Charles Wright. Whoo!
I had no idea that guitarist-singer Wright, a legendary figure on the L.A. soul-funk scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s, was even alive. He was one of the baaaad ones. He first hit pay dirt in 1967 as leader of the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band with “Spreadin’ Honey,” an expanded version of DJ Magnificent Montague’s radio theme. His trés-tuff group kicked out several hits – including “Do Your Thing” and “Express Yourself” – that defined the transition from soul to harder funk at the decade shift.
Rhino Handmade, the Web-only, limited-edition arm of Rhino Records, has just released a pair of two-CD collections, each comprising two-and-a-half hours of music, that depict Wright’s band as it transitioned from the journeyman ranks to soul-funk überhood.
Live at the Haunted House finds the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band standing on the verge of getting it on. The set was recorded May 18, 1968, at the titular Hollywood Boulevard watering hole. The show served as the basis for the group’s second Warner Bros. album Together, but has never been issued in its entirety.
At the time, Wright’s unit was, by his own definition, “a top 40 band” playing the soul hits of the day: Otis Redding, Temptations, Junior Walker, and most especially James Brown. But it was a corker – a hot, tightly drilled outfit featuring four horns and lofted by the metronomic skinwork of James Gadson, a drummer whose skills were commensurate with those of Clyde Stubblefield and other legendary J.B.’s tub-thumpers.
The Haunted House set captures the exact moment when the Rhythm Band moved from show-band status into its own. At the end of a medley that includes “Respect,” “Satisfaction,” and “Day Tripper,” the band swerves from a version of Dyke & the Blazers’ “Funky Broadway” into a meandering, stabbing beat, and Wright begins to gently exhort the crowd in his hoarse, frazzled voice. This improv became “Do Your Thing,” the band’s first major pop and R&B hit, and it set the template for its brand of sunny funkateering.
The groove became the thang for the Rhythm Band, and Wright took to booking blocks of time at Hollywood studios like Gold Star and Western, where he recorded the group as they cruised through their extended workouts, searching for an on-the-one pocket that could serve as the basis for a finished tune. Several of these slammin’ tracks – ranging from 20 to 30 minutes in length – form the core of the second part of Rhino’s new release, the sampledelic package Puckey Puckey: Jams & Outtakes 1970-1971.
Compiler Andy Zax compares the group’s massive studio blowouts not only to the heavy vamps of the J.B.’s, but also to the instro fonk of New Orleans’ Meters and the krautrock pulsations of Germany’s Can. He is not off the mark. On “Jam #1,” the Rhythm Band wriggles out of “Cissy Strut” into its own plunging bash. More incredibly, smack in the middle of “Jam #3,” Gadson’s unrelenting foundation locks with repetitive horn and guitar riffs to offer a preview of Can’s auto-hypnotic excursions circa Tago Mago.
This stuff may wear out listeners less obsessive than I; to be sure, Wright’s rugged regimen wore out the Rhythm Band, most of whom jumped ship around 1972 to work with the more laid-back Bill Withers. But for lovers of primal get-down, it’s tough to beat Charles Wright and his Watts mack daddies, who led West Coast funk into its own bold breed of stomp.
Chris Morris hosts Watusi Rodeo every Sunday at 9 a.m. on Indie 103.1.
Published: 04/23/2008
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