Various Artists - Country Funk 1969-1975 & Country Funk II 1967-1974 (2012-2104 Light In The Attic LITA 083 & LITA 116)

Intrepid record label Light in the Attic offers us another theme-based compilation we didn't know we needed until they did it. Previous examples, Listen Whitey! The Sounds of Black Power 1967-1974, the two volumes of Thai Funk, and Our Lives Are Shaped by What We Love: Motown's MoWest Story 1971-73 to name a few, were standard bearers; they highlighted essential sounds few but collectors owned. Country Funk: 1969-1975 brings together 16 sides from the catalogs of artists well-known and marginal, whose works all share mercurial qualities: their Southern rural roots actively engage emergent funk. Tony Joe White and Jim Ford are obvious choices, but their representative tracks aren't. In the former case, it's the swaggering "Stud Spider," and in the latter's it's raw gutbucket "I'm Wanta Make Her Love Me." Nostalgic memory and longing for Southern locales are addressed in numerous places such as in Johnny Adams' "Georgia Morning Dew" and John Randolph Marr's "Hello L.A - Bye Bye Birmingham." Set opener Dale Hawkins celebrates it all in "L.A., Memphis, Tyler, Texas" as Tower of Power-styled horns meet Stax guitars and Canned Heat's laid-back boogie. Elsewhere, the deep, funky, electric blues connect Gray Fox's reading of Buzz Clifford's "Hawg Frog" and Johnny Jenkins' take on Dr. John's classic "I Walk On Gilded Splinters"; their choruses and production quite literally mirror one another. Urban Blues, bluegrass, and country gospel make their appearance in Link Wray's "Fire and Brimstone." Bobbie Gentry's "He Made a Woman Out of Me," with its wah-wahs, shimmering strings, and shiny horns offers the sultry Delta blues underscored by massive breaks. And speaking of breaks, one of the stone killers in this set is Dennis the Fox's "Piledriver," with its thoroughly urban look at a country female trucker. Bobby Darin's "Light Blue" has a smoldering bassline that is brought right to the front line just as it is in Bobby Charles' "Street People." While Cherokee's "Funky Business" fits the theme, it has as much of the Byrds in it as it does Joe South. Mac Davis' "Lucas Was a Redneck" is a little too close to Tony Joe White for comfort, but that's a small quibble. Country Funk: 1969-1975 illuminates a brief but fruitful period where genre lines blurred, and both genres benefitted mightily.

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