Unraveling musical mysteries is part of what motivates me as a music journalist. I don’t claim to be very good or thorough at it, but the process alone is a way to appreciate the beauty and complexity of music-making that isn’t necessarily transparent through listening alone (or, er, the sonic equivalent of “transparency”).

This post is one such example and it begins, for me at least, with a song called “Happy Soul” that appears on an album by The Moon People that I picked up at the Groove Merchant a few years back. (Note: ironically, “Happy Soul” is the one song I did NOT include in the Suite but for reasons that will become clear shortly). “Happy Soul” is very striking, especially for a Latin soul song because 1) it’s fast and 2) it’s funky. Really funky. Funkier than most Latin soul songs one can think of. I would play it out when I could, especially because it’s a great “transition” track between Latin and funk sets. It’s not surprisingly then that, in 2006, when the DJ Premier-produced Xtina Aguilera single, “Ain’t No Other Man” came out, I recognized the sample immediately.

At least I thought I did.

A little while later, I heard “Happy Soul (With a Hook)” by Dave Cortez with the Moon People and it was basically the same instrumental track as “Happy Soul” but with Cortez’ trademark organ vamping all over it. Then, last year, I discovered the Latin Blues Band and their album, Take a Trip Pussycat. On there, they have a song called, “I’ll Be a Happy Man” and it is basically, the same exact song as “Happy Soul” only with vocals (and without the Cortez organ).

The plot thickened.

The LBB, the Cortez single and the Moon People album are all on Speed, a smaller Latin label of the late ’60s that specialized in Latin soul and boogaloo bands, including Frankie Nieves, and one of the rare female Latin groups, Dianne and Carole and the Latin Whatchamacallits. It’s one of the great, great Latin boutique labels of that era and the Big Ol’ Bag O Boogaloo series comps heavily from their catalog (with some odd omissions but that’s for another time). It was on that album that I heard The Moon People’s “Hippy Skippy Moon Strut” which sounded like the Cortez’ song but minus the organ and with a new piano arrangement.

WTF?

Around the same time I acquired a copy of the LBB album (thanks Rodney!), I also stumbled across this feature on the great Spectropop website (Latin fans should check out their thorough Tico feature). They finally helped me put many of the details together and I’m trying not to duplicate their already great work but, there was one element yet to add here: the testimony of Bobby Marin.

Marin is a composer and producer and he and his brother Richard were major players in the NY Latin scene in the 1960s and ’70s. I spoke to Marin while putting together the liner notes for an upcoming Fania anthology on Joe Bataan and wanting to take advantage of being able to speak to such a storied veteran in the scene, I asked him what some of his favorite compositions were and he named “I’ll Be a Happy Man.” At that point, I didn’t own the album yet so I had no idea he, along with Louie Ramirez and other players, were in the Latin Blues Band and I asked him to trace for me the history of the song. Between the Spectropop site and Marin’s own information, here’s what I was able to pull together (and to be sure, I really should talk to Marin again to fill in blanks):

Morty Craft – who ran Speed and was the main producer for the label – reassembled the Latin Blues Band into The Moon People. I’m not clear why he did this nor why he would have the group essentially record over their own LBB backing tracks with slight changes (but sans vocals) and then release it as its own album. I guess Craft felt like he could sell consumers the same songs twice. “Happy Soul,” from what I can tell, is simply “I’ll Be a Happy Man” without vocals. Well, almost without vocals…Marin told me that when he was in the studio, editing the Land of Love album, he insisted that they keep something of his original vocals, which ended up being a “whoooo!” somewhere in there. (In any case, I didn’t include “Happy Soul” in the suite since it’s a subtraction with no additions, unlike the other songs).

Soon thereafter, Craft sold the mechanical rights to that instrumental to Morris Levy at Roulette. At that point, the song transforms into “Happy Soul With a Hook.” The original piano is stripped off and replaced with Cortez’ organ playing plus some spacey wah-wah guitar. Speed ends up releasing this “new” song as a single. According to Spectropop, “Hippy Skippy Moon Strut” appears just a few months later and it is basically “Happy Soul With a Hook” minus organs, keeping the wah-wah, and throwing on that new piano arrangement I mentioned plus some vocals yelling, “hippy skippy!” and similar phrases. That single appears on Roulette rather than Speed (possibly because the latter had been purchased by Roulette by this point). Then fast forward nearly 40 years and DJ Premier flips “Hippy Dippy” for Xtina and the story ends.

Well, not quite.

My convo with Marin yielded two more tidbits of information. First of all, RCA apparently didn’t clear the sample correctly. My guess is that they cleared the mechanical rights but not the songwriter rights and when Fania (who, by now, owned the Speed catalog) figured this out, they got ready to sue. The problem is: they didn’t know who the original composer was either and one day, when Marin was visiting, they asked him, “hey, would you happen to know who the composer is?” upon which Marin replied, “yeah…me.” So as it turns out, Marin is waiting to see if a settlement happens, and if so, he likely stands to make a nice piece of change off this.

The second piece of info I gleaned from him was around who the hell was the drummer on the song. After all, one reason why the song stands out so much, why it probably got remade three times and then sampled, is because of those drum breaks. They’re unusual for a Latin soul song – I can’t think of many other songs in that era that featured open breakbeats – so I had to ask Marin about it. His reply, “well, that was Bernard Purdie.”

Jaw drop.

That explains quite a bit…and it makes total sense (Purdie did a grip of studio work in NY in that era, plus the drumming sounds like something he’d put together) but it’s a detail that, as far as I can tell, no one has ever noted before. And that, my friends, is the kind of discovery that motivates me to get up every morning. With all that, thanks for reading…here’s the “Happy Soul Suite” for your edification:

Soul-Sides.com presents…The “Happy Soul Suite”

Created from…

The Latin Blues Band feat. Luis Aviles: (I’ll Be A) Happy Man
From Take a Trip Pussycat (Speed, 1968)

Dave Cortez with The Moon People: Happy Soul (With A Hook)
From 7″ (Speed, 1968). Also on El Barrio: The Bad Boogaloo.

The Moon People: Hippy, Skippy Moon Strut
From 7″ (Roulette, 1969). Also on Big Ol’ Bag O’ Boogaloo Vol. 1.

Christina Aguilera: Ain’t No Other Man
From Back to Basics (RCA, 2006)

Etoile De Dakar : Tolou Badou Ndiaye
taken from their self-titled album on SACEM

Elias Rahbani : From The Moon
taken from the 12″ single on EMI

Formula 7 : Trouble
taken from their self-titled album on Castelinho

Erick Cosaque Et Les Voltages 8 : Decere Nou De Maye
taken from the album “Chene A Kunta Kinte”

In case you didn’t already know by now, I get more geeked off vinyl than your average DJ. Moreso even than your run-of-the-mill skinny-necked record nerd. I even have nightmares that I will oneday join the ranks of those golem-esque record-fiending freaks who stop bathing and lose all social skills in the sole pursuit of posessing the holy plastic grail. If you see me start to get like that, please intervene.

However, in the meantime what that means for you all is that I’ve been hoarding some serious monsters for a special occaision. As a frequenter of the Soulstrut.com forums, I found my occaision in the form of what we strutters call an “ISH”. This ISH business provides a place for similarly crazed crate-diggers to show off some of their favorite obscurities to fellow record nerds. Being the geek that I am, I went for it. Today’s tunes are culled from the same stash that made it into my ISH. For those that are new to this website, I highly recommend hanging out for a little while. Amid the flurry of non-record-related bullshwank, there’s the occaisional nuggets of real-world knowledge- not to mention a whole lot of music sharing. Without further ado, onto the music…

READ MY “ISH” TO GET THE INFO

Paul Simon : Late… (Edit De DJ Spun)
taken from the 12″ on Editions Disco

LTJ Xperience Ft. Joe Bataan : Ordinary Guy (Latin Club Edit)
taken from the 12″ on Irma (also available on this CD)

Oreja vs. Plenafro : Julieta
taken from the 12″ on Candela

Schoolly D : Skool’s Out (Les Rythmes Digitales Remix)
taken from the 12″ on Wall Of Sound

Last week Spring burst into the city with a palpable gush of long-dormant virility. The mere site of magnolia blossoms stirring in the sun evoked more artistic appreciation and divine wellness in the collective heart of New York City than all it’s art museums, galleries and theaters combined throughout the entire rest of the year. In every direction you could find someone smiling and taking a long-deserved deep breath of rebirth. Looking out on the dancefloor, the stink of fermented pheromones was spilling out in bucketloads as party people remembered why they live in the land of Gotham. This music is as close as I can get right now to expressing the communal kinetic release I see in my neighbors and friends and feel in the warmest part of myself. Enjoy these true treasures of bombasticism and use them to shake loose whatever cantankerous crust you created over winter.

Rabbits & Carrots: Las 4 Culturas + Romeo Y Julieta
From Soul Latino (Musart, 1969). Also available on LP.

Bonus: Rabbits & Carrots: Express Yourself (snippet)
From We Got More Soul EP (Musart, 1971). Also on Soul Latino (CD but not LP)

File Soul Latino under those albums seemingly too good to be true – a group of Mexican rock/jazz musicians with a trio of brothers and nephews at core – sitting down in 1968 to record a series of instrumentals, most of them with a hard, funk edge. Frankly, if someone had told me this was some retro-soul band, masquerading as a vintage group with that backstory – I’d sooner believe the hoax. Not that Mexico City would lack the necessary musicians to put something like this together but it’s like stumbling across an album such as that by Chile’s infamous Xingu. Given how rare this purports to be, it’s a genuine treat that the folks at Vampisoul got Musart’s permission to reissue it.

Yes indeed: Rabbits & Carrots were real, as was their Soul Latino album and subsequent EP. That album constitutes one of the holy grails of Mexican funk albums and it’s not just because of rarity or its unusualness – it’s damn well put together and recorded well. Check out how they take on Don Randi’s “Theme From Romeo and Juliet” – all dissonant whines and moody loops, beautifully accented by Luis Agúero’s guitar and a brass section lead by Ramón Flores and Ramón Negrete and I’m assuming its bad leader and percussionist Salvador Agüero on those tinkling chimes.

“Las 4 Culturas,” according to the liner notes, is the album’s sole “original” song, a song about the Tlateloco Massacre. That may very well be true that the song is meant to inspire awareness around the murder of potentially 200-300 people before the Mexico City Olympics but musically speaking, most people would probably note: “uh, isn’t this ‘Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved’ by James Brown?” And you’d be right – it is. In fact, that’s how it’s billed on this 12” from a year or so ago. Not that I’m complaining – it would make sense to take a song with a title as politically charged as Brown’s and reapply it to the happenings in Mexico City.

For a bonus cut, I threw on a tease of the group’s 1971 cover of “Express Yourself.” This came after Salvador Agüero (nickname “Rabito,” hence the group’s name) left the band and a vocalist named Max (Max what?) joined. This isn’t necessarily my favorite cover of the Watts 103rd’s immortal classic but I dig its Spanish-language remake and given the timing with the Watts 103rd Week, it seemed only apropos (plus, that ridiculous drum-break toward the end doesn’t hurt either). Just be aware: this song, along with covers of “Sex Machine,” “We Got More Soul” and “Spill the Wine” are available on the CD of the album, as well as a separate EP, but it’s not on the vinyl LP version of the Soul Latino album.

Erykah Badu :Cleva (Captain Planet Smarter Samba Remix)
taken from the upcoming 12″ on BSTRD BOOTS
(available as DL for a limited time only! then you gotta buy it!)

YO!!! I miss this blog. Been way too busy with other hustling these past couple weeks, but I promise to return full force next week. In the meantime, feast your ears on the latest remix and come out to see my band THE BEATARDS tonight at Mercury Lounge. We’re joined by extended family members Vamoose. If you don’t know by now, then you need to get wise ’cause we know how to turn a show into a party.

And yeah, if you haven’t yet, join our FAM CLUB for just $8 and get our full-length CD in full-color, super-stunning, digi-pack vibrancy. It’s SOOOO worth it! On top of 12 original Beatards tunes, you get a handful of our remixes and tracks from our friends like Santogold, Stephanie McKay, Jahcoozi, Roxy Cottontail, Kid Acne, Vamoose and more!!!

Estelle: Come Over
Taken from the forthcoming album Shine on Homeschool (2008)

Here’s the deal: I’m only going to post one song from this album because you need to buy the whole damn thing when it comes out on domestic release in two weeks. (If you know what’s good for you you’ll cough up the extra few bucks for an import and get the jump on all the cats who are gonna be on Estelle’s jock come May.) Seriously. It’s not terribly often that I’m introduced to a new record and can almost immediately forget about the other 35 gazillion songs on my Ipod and 46 bazillion LP’s cluttering up my house… but this one did it for me.

This is an album that bears well its title. Tight production, well-selected and executed guest appearances, pop value and heady appeal, all anchored by the voice of a truly talented vocalist… If I sound gushy, it’s because I am. I could have pulled virtually any one of these meticulously crafted twelve songs and felt pretty good about sharing it. But as it happens this particular tune has carried me on its lover’s-rock-anthemic wings through an LA weekend that, in part because of the temperature outside (blazing) and in part because of the tone and quality of this track (blazing), seemed to usher Summer into the City one fell swoop. I had this song bumping at the beach, on the Los Feliz 3 Par, cruising late night on the balmy deserted freeways, at more than a couple BBQ’s… and everywhere I went cats seemed to fall into lock step with the loping shimmering summery bounce. Oo-oh, oo-oh, oo-oh. So so sweet.

Check out tour dates and artist information here. Estelle’s coming. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya’.