The Best Funk Albums of the '70s

Sly Stone cut most of it alone at his home studio, overdubbing onto the same tape until the top end wore off, and drove Family Affair with a Maestro Rhythm King drum box instead of Greg Errico. Billy Preston's electric piano is the only thing holding that track upright. Spotify's master oddly labels several cuts Single Version. Funk's murkiest hour, and its most imitated.

Westbound put it out with a woman's head screaming up out of the dirt on the sleeve. George Clinton told Eddie Hazel to play the title solo as though he had just learned his mother had died, then faded most of the band out of the mix, so Maggot Brain runs ten minutes of guitar over almost nothing.

Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley had just come off James Brown's payroll, and Casablanca got the horn section that resulted. Give Up the Funk is why the record sold the way it did: Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell locking a bassline to a clavinet while five voices chant a nursery rhyme at you. The mythology arrived fully built.

Cut for the film Hell Up in Harlem and turned down by its producers, who wanted something more current, so Polydor put it out as a double album instead. The Payback stretches past seven minutes on essentially one chord, Jimmy Nolen scratching sixteenths while Fred Wesley's horns stab and vanish. Brown mutters more than he sings and lets the band do the arguing.

New Orleans economy: four men, no clutter, Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn producing for Reprise. Just Kissed My Baby is Joseph Modeliste playing a second-line pattern so far behind the beat it sounds broken until you try counting it, George Porter Jr. pinning the bass to one note. Spotify's edition tags Hey Pocky A-Way a 2002 remaster and leaves the rest alone.

Junie Morrison, late of the Ohio Players, wrote and arranged much of this after joining Clinton's payroll, and Warner Bros. shipped the original LP with a bonus seven-inch, which is why the streaming edition ends on a live Maggot Brain. One Nation Under a Groove is a marching chant over a bassline that refuses to resolve. Every track but that closer is suffixed Original.

Hancock dissolved the Mwandishi sextet, kept only Bennie Maupin, then hired Paul Jackson and Harvey Mason to play something people could move to. Chameleon opens on an ARP Odyssey bassline played by hand, two bars cycling for fifteen minutes while the Rhodes wanders above it. Columbia expected a jazz record and got the biggest seller the label's jazz roster had managed.

Billboard named it the best-selling album of 1973, which nobody remembers now. Seven players out of Long Beach who began as Eric Burdon's backing band, with Lee Oskar's harmonica cutting across the Latin percussion. The Cisco Kid rides a two-chord vamp, guitar and clavinet trading eighth notes, and never bothers with a chorus. Spotify renders the title with a lowercase is.

Dayton's finest signed to Mercury and got a number one pop single out of it, helped along by a sleeve that some shops refused to rack. Fire opens on an alarm bell and drops into a horn riff with Marshall Jones's bass sitting a hair ahead of everybody. Spotify's edition adds a Together / Feelings reprise the original pressing did not carry.

Three younger members joined the three originals, which is where the title comes from, and T-Neck moved its distribution to Epic. That Lady rebuilds one of their own 1964 singles around Ernie Isley's fuzzed and phased guitar. Border case: half of this record is song-first soul and belongs next door. Spotify's edition piles quad mixes and spoken interviews onto the end.

Written as the soundtrack to a film almost nobody saw, with Charles Stepney co-producing and arranging alongside Maurice White. Shining Star starts on a guitar figure and a horn stab and never leaves that pocket, Verdine White's bass doing all the travelling. Border case: the ballads lean soul, but the rhythm section is pure funk and the kalimba is theirs alone.

Before any of this he was the teenager playing bass behind James Brown on Sex Machine; by 1976 Warner Bros. had given him his own band and a star-shaped bass. Stretchin' Out (In a Rubber Band) is one envelope-filtered bass figure over a beat slowed almost to a crawl. Spotify credits the album to Bootsy Collins rather than Bootsy's Rubber Band.

Married to Miles Davis for a year, she pointed him at Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, then produced her own records for Just Sunshine when no major would touch them. He Was a Big Freak is a filthy two-chord stomp sung in a voice that scrapes rather than soars. Spotify dates the Light in the Attic reissue 2008 and appends four Record Plant rough mixes.

Before they hired a front man, this band chanted in unison and let the horns carry the tune; De-Lite put the record out in 1973 and took two singles into the top ten. Jungle Boogie is a two-note horn line, a rasped vocal and Robert Bell's bass, and film soundtracks have been renting it ever since. Border case: the pop turn came later.

Oakland's horn section on their third album, their first with Lenny Williams singing, out on Warner Bros. What Is Hip? is a David Garibaldi drum part built almost entirely from ghost notes against Rocco Prestia's unbroken muted sixteenths, fingerstyle, with no gap anywhere in it. The five horns arrange themselves and never solo when a stab will do.

Six Scotsmen on Atlantic with Arif Mardin producing, and Pick Up the Pieces went to number one on the Hot 100 as an instrumental with a shouted title and no other words. Hamish Stuart and Alan Gorrie swap bass and guitar between tracks; drummer Robbie McIntosh died within months of release. Spotify's edition tacks a live Montreux take of the same tune on the end.