Funk Discoveries

Funk raged across the '70s like an uncontained brush fire, laying down the rhythm we were powerless to resist. We've pulled some of its greatest tracks hidden deep in the albums' grooves for our Funk Discoveries Essentials. James Brown tears a page from the Blaxploitation handbook with "The Payback" from the movie Slaughter's Big Rip-Off, featuring some of the Godfather's all-time rawest, grittiest vocals. The Ohio Players lock into a distinctly primal rhythm in their "Funky Worm," with Drifters-style comedy vocals rubbing up hard against the song's double entendres. And in the Commodores' "Slippery When Wet," a yaaaooowwwing Lionel Richie moves around the bass-bumping beat like an alley cat on the prowl.

Booty shaking yet? Just wait until you step into our Next Steps, where bands from the Crescent City, Memphis, and Scotland(!) lay their boogie in your ear buds.

Funk boasted such an irresistible groove that it seemingly sprang up everywhere at once, from places you'd expect it — Philly, Memphis, Detroit — to places you'd have imagined were totally funk-proof, like Scotland. Seductive isn't a word often associated with Scotland, but Dundee's Average White Band smolders with sensuality in their hip-grinding slow jam "School Boy Crush." The Crescent City's loose-limbed second-line rhythms snake through the Meters' "Funkify Your Life," steamy as a New Orleans August night. And Stax Studios' renowned house band, the Bar-Kays, wind a screaming wah-wah guitar line around a steel-jaw-trap-tight horn section in the instrumental "Humpin,'" later sampled by Cypress Hill on "Real Estate."

Now it's time to open up some Deep Cuts, where brothers from Brecker to Johnson to Troutman serve up a plateful of stanky, pulse-pounding tracks.

Certain bands played with such rocket-science precision, you'd swear they shared DNA. Well, here are a few funkmeisters who actually did. George and Louis Johnson, a.k.a. the Brothers Johnson, crafted their own Los Angeles-based brand of "sophisti-funk," with Louis slapping and popping bass riffs with herky-jerk precision. Their "Ain't We Funkin' Now," produced by the legendary Quincy Jones, features yet another funk soul brother, Michael Brecker on sax. The Philly-born Brecker Brothers (the aforementioned Michael on sax and Randy on horns) straddled jazz, funk, and fusion with their slinky, sax-honking dance groove "Sneakin' Up Behind You." And the Troutman clan — brothers Roger, Larry, Tony, and Lester — anchored Zapp, whose cosmic-slop classic "Funky Bounce" showcased Roger's space-alien vocals, processed by the keyboard-based vocoder, which gave him his trademark Mr. Roboto-esque machine sound.

Even before the dashikis had begun to lose their sheen, before the tube tops got a little tight to wear in public, funk had planted its flag, claimed its territory, and strutted into our dance steps and onto our radios. We'd marched to the beat of James Brown's "Funky Drummer," rocketed into the clouds on the Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster," and raised a ruckus with Parliament's "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)." But beyond the hits, hidden in those albums, like mangroves (or crocodiles) in a swamp, were some of the nastiest, greasiest funk tracks ever slathered onto wax. We've dug through the crates for the bass thumpin'-est, booty bumpin'-est grooves ever committed to wax by master funkateers and assembled them in one funk-filled feast — all just a mouse-click away.