Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly… groovin’, on a Sunday afternoon, suggested The Young Rascals (later simply ‘The Rascals’. Alas, the group was not sufficiently long-lived to become ‘The Old Rascals’) in their 1967 white soul hit Groovin’…
…But how groovy is Groovin’, really? I’d say that its vibe was more towards the loungin’ end of the groovin’ scale. Not that I claim to be an expert in these matters. Are there clear divisions I wonder, on the chillin’-loungin’-groovin’-funkin’ chart, or is a matter of gradation? Take De La Soul’s Eye Know from the gloriously nutty 1989 album 3 Feet High and Rising (for me, the high point of hip-hop/rap genre)…Is it more groovy than loungey, or vice versa?
That’s Otis Redding whistling away on Eye Know – a Dock of the Bay sample (sampling was pretty much entirely unregulated back in ’89). Now for me, Otis is responsible for the grooviest damn number ever made that isn’t out-and-out funk: the cock-of-the-walk strutter Hard to Handle…
… Whereas Gene Harris’ Listen Here is most certainly at the funky end of the groove spectrum, with the added complication of jazz. This is the original version (from 1989, a surprisingly groovy year) but there’s also a superb remix by the late rapper and producer Guru, for the 1996 Blue Note compilation The New Groove Vol 1. No video online for that version yet, which is probably just as well or we’d all be suffering from a total groove overload by now and would require some drastic de-funking procedure, such as watching The Antiques Roadshow. Check it out…
Hit the high note you have Brit, kind of an Yma Sumac of the ether, groovin was the in-thing and Otis in there with the best, nobody actually knew what groovin was but we all went along with it, pretending to be groovy, just in case we were thought ungroovy. The coolest dude in the groovin bin was one Thomas Petty………
She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good-lookin’ mama who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights
Well, she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin’
I said, “I dig you baby, but I got to keep movin’ on”
Keep movin’ on
Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I’m tired of screwin’ up, tired of going down
Tired of myself, tired of this town
Oh, my my, oh, hell yes
Honey, put on that party dress
Buy me a drink, sing me a song
Take me as I come ’cause I can’t stay long
There’s pigeons down on Market Square
She’s standin’ in her underwear
Lookin’ down from a hotel room
The nightfall will be comin’ soon
Oh, my my, oh, hell yes
You got to put on that party dress
It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone
I hit my last number and walked to the road
“I dig you baby, but I got to keep movin’ on”, can you imagine saying that today, the baby in question would belt you round the ear with her laptop.
‘Groovin’ was thought to be the ‘in’ thing, must go, “I dig you Dabblers but I gotta keep movin’ on, keep movin’ on”
The forthcoming – imminent! – Hooting Yard paperback for 2011 contains a piece called “What Is Wrong With Groovin’?”, based on what is surely the greatest groovin’ song of them all, sung by the redoubtable Letta Mbulu. That voice! No discussion of groovin’ can afford to omit it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03QSQvlGYI0
Great selection Brit! I am grooving in the garden to de la soul! Regarding sampling I think it was possibly the case back then that you could release a song with samples but depending on how much of the original track was used, royalties would go to the original artists – this resulted in a few tracks reaching number one and the remixers getting not a penny for their troubles
Antiques Roadshow, not funky? Lady Gaga disagrees…