Blogarhythms

I’ve had Jazz/Soul/Pop pianist Ramsey Lewis‘ 1974 Columbia Records LP Sun Goddess sitting next to my desk for months now. It got put there when I pulled a bunch of my “go-to” dusty joints out of the spare backpack they’d been tucked into, “just in case,” for the last few years and mixed them in with my Records at Random potentials. And while I had been reticent during that time to touch it due both to it’s familiarity and it’s solar theme, this week’s record high temperatures made it a no-brainer pick for this week’s feature.

The product of a reunion between Lewis (most well-known for a string of albums anchored by piano covers of Pop hits for the Chess/Cadet label) and his former drummer Maurice White (who brings along his band Earth Wind & Fire and longtime collaborator & former Chess/Cadet in-house arranger/producer Charles Stepney), Sun Goddess was an across the board hit. Hitting the top, or very close to the top, of nearly every chart that existed at the time, the album was the classically-trained but populist-minded Lewis’ biggest commercial success since 1965’s The In Crowd.

No longer content with making the radio-fodder of the time over into his own sophisticated vision of Soul and Gospel-influenced instrumental Jazz, Sun Goddess found Lewis and his crew experimenting. Celestial Soul, spaced-out Funk, abstract arrangements and out-of-this-world electronic instrumentation were mingled with their chart-savvy notions, cosmopolitan ambitions and swingin’ sensibilities. And — with the exception of a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Livin’ For the City” that turns it into a churning stew of soulful down-home Gospel-Funk and Orchestral Disco — they turned out an album of original compositions.

Of these tunes the title track, an eight-and-a-half-minute ode to the light of our world written by Maurice White and featuring members of EW&F (including Phillip Bailey), is probably the most memorable. With a wordless vocal hook, a cascade of high-pitched synth-strings-and-whistles, simmering Rhodes notes, popping hand-drums and a sax solo on the bridge, the rolling, bass-driven track is a fusion of the Jazz-Funk sound as exemplified by the Mizell Brothers‘ catalog, the slick, sun-drenched West Coast Soul & Funk of acts such as EW&F, War, Bill Withers & Tower of Power and the refined rhythms & melodies of Philadelphia’s MFSB-fueled dancefloor Soul. As such it’s as much a lazy Soul/Jazz classic as “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” and a sweaty Disco/Soul classic as “Love Is the Message,” while retaining all the accessibility of any Earth Wind & Fire hit.

Other cuts like “Love Song,” which updates Ramsey’s piano stylings for the mid-’70s with a funky downtempo Disco arrangement complete with strings, and “Hot Dawgit,” another callabo with White and Bailey co-penned by Stepney where Lewis’ keys play support to a bouncy listener-friendly Funk groove, follow a simple, soulful fusion-by-numbers formula. While “Jungle Strut,” with it’s African ad-libbing, array of percussion, bluesy Rhodes licks, gut-bucket bass and space-ship synths sounds more authentically funky, like a hybrid of the Ohio Players, Kool & The Gang and Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters outfit.

It’s a similar off-kilter funkiness, not to mention a whole gang of gurgling and twinkling from Ramsey’s Arp synthesizers, which makes “Tambura” my favorite track on the album though. The synth bassline that opens the track is the sort of sticky thing one might expect to drip off of an alien life-form, but which was spread all over albums from the aforementioned Ohio Players and Headhunters at the time. The main groove of the tune is both slick and dirty, like the grease that makes the bottom of the brown-bag full of fried food from the corner bodega (can you tell I’m hungry for beef patties and potato balls?) translucent by the time you get it home. And when the space-goo and the food-grease get slapped together after the wicked drum break on the bridge, the result is a salve that will clear out the ear and loosen the joints with it’s deep-fried space lubrication.

The final cut on the disc, “Gemini Rising” (shout out to all you Geminis… happy born-month), is on some space shit as well. But it’s spacey in a most Jazzy kind of way, with splashy cymbals, sizzling hi-hats, rolling snares, meandering keys, walking bass and some out-there soloing augmented by the whistle and whine of synthesizers. It’s like the futuristic bachelor-pad music James T. Kirk must have put on in his cabin on the Enterprise when he was trying to impress some space broad enough to get her in the sack, or the music cyborg Jazz enthusiasts will flock to smoky cabarets to listen to in some noirish dystopian future.

I kinda wonder what the record buyers who made Sun Goddess a chart hit made of the weirder compositions like “Gemini Rising” and “Tambura.” Personally I love the way their chilly darkness and sticky-to-the-touch gunkiness counterbalance the crystal clear warmth and bright sunniness of the title track. Besides, even if an album’s built around a classic as essential as sunlight itself that’s bound to please on the dancefloor, in the lounge or at the backyard barbeque, it can always use a few “deep” cuts for us dusty-fingered diggers and shades-drawn wax-addicts to keep in reserve for our basements, laboratories and late-night listening sessions… Or maybe just those days when it isn’t so hot or sunny?