Various Artist, Wheedle’s Groove – Seattle’s Finest in Funk & Soul 1965-75
Who’d have guessed that Kenny G once had the funk?
Who said all garage bands played rock music? As a number of compilations and reissues over the past decade from labels such as Now Again and Guerilla has definitively proven, there were any number of small, homemade combos playing R&B at the same time as dozens of suburban zit-farms were filling future Nuggets and Pebbles compilations. That's certainly true of Seattle, which may be more famous for its garage-rockers than its funkateers, but still had no shortage of the latter.
Wheedle's Groove, the 2004 collection pieced together by longtime Emerald City DJ Mr. Supreme, serves as an ideal showcase for those bands (along with a trio of new tracks from like-minded acts: Misterholmes & the Brotherhood, the Clarence Mack Express and Supreme's own Sharpshooters). There are hot, organ-driven grooves from the Black on White Affair ("A Bunch of Changes"), loose, sharp, post-Sly & the Family Stone jams from Cold, Bold & Together ("[Stop] Losing Your Chances" and "Somebody's Gonna Burn Ya," both from 1975 and featuring none other than a young Kenny G. in the horn section), and florid wah-wah action from Cookin' Bag ("This Is Me").
The cover versions are exceptional. The Overton Berry Trio jettisons the verses of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" and transforms the "na-na-na-na" coda into a hypnotic piano vamp. The Johnny Lewis Trio makes the Meters' New Orleans favorite "Cissy Strut" into a breakbeat-lover's delight, thanks to loose and echoing drums. And the Topics bring it all back home by picking up the ultimate Northwest rock staple, "Louie Louie," and giving it a loose bass-and-handclaps breakdown — and, of course, some soul.
