 Various Artists What started out as a reverent celebration of Blue Note's lasting influence on DJ culture has turned into a highly revisionist history that I'm sure Alfred Lion would merely shake his head at. Now owned by EMI-Capitol, Blue Note has been free to put out compilations like this one with little regard for what was originally on Blue Note – anything goes now that the vaults are open. Or perhaps it's EMI-Capitol using the Blue Note brand name to cash in on the current DJ trend, which has jumped across the ocean and is no longer proprietary to those "London DJs" I keep questioning the existence of. But you know what? The Blue Breakbeats series in particular has richly benefited from this revisionist Blue Note history, because Volume 4 is an unexpected triumph from start to finish. The series was founded to feature the original tracks that have been sampled by the ubiquitous "London DJs" and assorted hip-hoppers (Blue Note relates the tale of the success of "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" about as often as Paul McCartney tells the story of how he wrote "Yesterday" … "Well, you see, I woke up with this little melody in me head one day." Yuck!). And they're still doing that, but with much more flair now. No offense to Michael Cuscuna or whoever compiled the first couple of volumes, but the newest one is farrrrrr-out fun, the likes of which we rarely see in a compilation. The disc runs the gamut from total bizarre weirdness (Gene Harris's "Prelude" from Astral Signal, which opens the disc) to Sound Gallery-style bombast ("Holy Thursday" by David Axelrod) to deep funk ("Woman of the Ghetto" by queen bitch Marlena Shaw) to out-there-beyond-Planet-Camp antics like Ike & Tina's take on Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." In between there's lots of fun from Herbie Hancock ("Bring Down the Birds" from Blow Up, which most will recognize immediately as the bass line from "Groove is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite) and even Bob Dorough ("Three is the Magic Number," always a pleasure). Now, I don't recall Bob Dorough being on Blue Note until 1997 … but never mind the disregard for purism. The long and short of it is, it's amazing to hear a "Schoolhouse Rock" song in a jazz/funk context – and not even a different version. Anyone familiar only with De La Soul's recreation of this track will delight in hearing Bob's funky original. For me, the single towering highlight is "The Beat Goes On" off Buddy Rich's Big Swing Face album, a CD I've been tempted by but never really had the gumption to buy – this track features perhaps the single greatest slow-brew-into-brash-release ever recorded: two minutes of utterly transfixing vocals from Buddy's teenage daughter Cathy, who can't hit all the notes, but sings with more sexy confidence than any of them N'Sync boys could muster of you put them in a room with 50 Danish 14-year-olds. (?) She delivers Sonny Bono's lyrics perfectly – makes much more sense than the Sonny & Cher version – and then Daddy takes over with the band for some ass-kickin' big band brass. Wonderful, wonderful moment. The disc hardly peaks there – there's the breakbeat-treasure trove of "Shack Up" by Banbara, the strutting groove of The Three Sounds' "Repeat After Me," which is augmented by strings and woodwinds, and the baffling too-good-to-be-true where-the-hell-did-this-come-from, will-you-stop-making-those-super-hyphenated-sentences whiteness of Paul Nero's "This is Soul," which closes the album on a bizarre and hilarious note. I can't vouch for how much of this stuff actually came from Blue Note's vaults – even the Herbie Hancock track, I believe, didn't come from one of his Blue Note albums – but, perhaps sometimes a little intentional truth-bending can result in true greatness. I mean, I'd never have gotten my dream job if I'd checked that little box about whether I'd ever been convicted of a felony, right? I mean, pedophilia is in the eye of the beholder, right? Right?!?!
Review by Bjorn 4 Porn |