Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Playlist: WWOZ DJ Soul Sister

In a city known for its legendary music scene, New Orleans community-based radio station WWOZ serves as an institution in itself. It is highly regarded as one of the best stations in the country, and its disc jockeys continuing play a fresh selection of jazz, R&B, funk, and soul.

 DJ Soul Sister, known worldwide as the “queen of rare groove,” has hosted her "Soul Power" show on WWOZ FM and "right on party situations" for nearly two decades in her native New Orleans. One of the longest-running live DJ artists in New Orleans, the veteran radio programmer and host of the longest-running rare groove radio show in the U.S., vinyl collector, crate digger, party promoter and tastemaker is highly regarded and respected not only in her hometown, but around the globe.

We recently asked DJ Soul Sister to curate a playlist for Girls on Your Turntable and here is her selection.  

 

DJ Soul Sister’s “Bold Soul Sisters” Playlist Part 1

A playlist of rare groove, funk, disco, and other vintage soulful music by fierce women artists that you may or may not have heard of before.
  1. "Smoke Signals" - Brides of Funkenstein, 1980
    I’m partial to this song because I’m a huge P-Funk head, and my cousin Dawn Silva happens to be one of the Brides. Even if none of the above were true, this group should always be included in the conversation about Funk music. The women of P-Funk’s most successful spinoff, outside of Bootsy’s Rubber Band and aside from sister group Parlet, provided the background (and foreground) vocal sweetening on Parliament-Funkadelic’s greatest jams. I can’t even imagine songs like “Flash Light” and “(not just) Knee Deep” without their voices.
     

     
  2.   “So In Tune With You” – Kellee Patterson, 1979    
    Gary, Indiana-born Kellee Patterson was always winning – whether it was local youth talent competitions alongside fellow music-loving neighbors Michael Jackson and his brothers or winning beauty pageants. She enjoyed a prolific recording career in the mid- to late 1970s, and opened for entertainers like Johnny Carson. Rare groove enthusiasts swear by her 1976 LP Kellee. That one’s amazing but, lately, I can’t get enough of this winning dancefloor cut from her 1979 release, All the Things You Are.

     
  3.  “Sister Funk” – Gloria Williams, 1973  
    I don’t know much about Ms. Williams except that she lays down some serious grit on this 7” hunk of funk. Her vocal delivery is oddly somewhere between the Ohio Players and Playboy Magazine. I can’t get enough.
        
  4.  “Love Shock” – Kitty & the Haywoods, 1977 
    Speaking of the Ohio Players, they produced one album by the family group from Chicago consisting of well-seasoned session vocalists who sang with Leroy Hutson and other renowned soul artists. This cut, the title track, is a Funk monster , and the rest of the album focuses on plenty of lovely mellow cuts, which are equally nicety.

  5. “Number One” – Patrice Rushen, 1982  
    I’ve focused a lot on female vocalists in this list, so now it’s time to spotlight an instrumentalist, considered to be number one amongst her peers. Considered one of the world’s top jazz pianists, she hit the ground running as an in-demand session player on sides by Sonny Rollins and Eddie Henderson, and released her debut album in 1974. She switched to R&B, Funk, and dance music in the late 1970s, keeping her soulful jazz edge and winning over pop fans in the process. This instrumental cut from her top selling album Straight from the Heart (containing the hit “Forget Me Nots”) is a perfect example of how jazz grooves can work on the dance floor. 
 





Check out event promoter, soulful dj artist, and music writer Melissa A. Weber aka DJ Soul Sister on the web at facebook.com/djsoulsister, or listen to her weekly “Soul Power” show, the longest running rare groove radio program in the U.S., every Saturday night from 8-10pm Central Standard Time on WWOZ in New Orleans, streaming live at wwoz.org.


 

No comments:

Post a Comment