A couple of things triggered the idea for this post, first Little
Royal's version of "Jealous Kind Of Fella" where he raps much of the
song and also the hip-hop track by NONDO which samples James
Brown.
It got me thinking when did rapping start. It seems that it is
attributed to the late 70s / early 80s with the likes of The Sugar Hill
Gang and Grandmaster Flash & co when it was first commercially available but was going on in the Bronx long before in the 70s. Little Royal's single was released in
1972 and a couple of tracks here by Joe Tex, the first 1972/73 and the next
1975 all contain what would be termed as 'rapping'. Millie Jackson was also rapping in the early 70s.
Gil Scott-Heron is regarded as the Godfather of Hip-Hop and his debut
solo single released in 1971 (but taken from his 1970 album "Small Talk
at 125th and Lenox") "The Television Will Not Be Televised" is
considered a major influence on hip-hop music. Before him were The Last
Poets who rose out the the civil rights movement in the late 60s with their spoken word albums.
I've chosen a couple of Joe Tex recordings that have been popular on the Northern/Modern Soul scene which contain what could loosely be described as rap: "All The Heaven A Man Really Needs" / "Under Your Powerful Love".
As Bill Buckley (SoulAndJazzAndFunk) has just reminded me, the title of his 1972 album was "From The Roots Came The Rapper" if we needed further evidence!
Sadly the only UK chart hit Joe Tex had in UK was "Ain't Gonna Bump No
More (With No Big Fat Woman)", can you imagine that ever getting
playlisted in these politically correct days? In fact on the official UK
chart site they have 'conveniently' removed the last part and named
it "Ain't Gonna Bump No More"! Cancel culture in action, as in the song he
recorded in 1989 on "Different Strokes", "It's Ridiculous".
Joe Tex died of a heart attack aged just 47 in 1982.
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2 comments:
It's still amazing that Joe Tex only had one hit in the UK among the huge amount of recordings!!! And there have been some very good ones though.
Yves
... and the one he did have is not a particularly good one! A novelty record!
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