Album Reviews

Funky, bluesy electric guitarist Mel Brown, now 78, is still at it. He was 27 back in 1967 when Impulse released this showcase for his super-clarified style of electric funk/jazz blues guitar.

The Jackson, Mississippi born and bred guitarist, who moved to the L.A. area as a teenager, had built a solid career as a session man. He’d played on T-Bone Walker’s popular Bluesway album Stormy Monday Blues and even on a Bill Cosby album when someone at Impulse decided to give him a solo shot.

Backed by an equally funky rhythm section of Gerald Wiggins on organ, Ronald Brown on electric bass and Paul Humphrey on drums, Brown lays out the tastiest, most concise funk licks you’ve likely heard in some time. He may twist, turn and bend the notes, but no matter how when he plays them they stay played. Brown must have been taught to pick up after himself as a child because he plays the most fastidiously clean funk and soul you’re ever likely to hear.

The seemingly unlikely choice of guitarist Herb Ellis, best known for his work with Oscar Peterson and later as a member of “Great Guitars” along with Charlie Byrd and Barney Kessel, backs Brown on five tracks. Instrumentally, Ellis stays in the backdrop as sturdy support, but he also contributes some good tunes.

If you like this sort of easy going, fun background barbecue stuff, you’ll love this great choice for resurrection made by Sundazed/Euphoria’s Bob Irwin who has never met a great guitar record he didn’t want to, or didn’t reissue.

Engineered by the great Eddie Brackett (he engineered Frank Sinatra at The Sands fer instance), you’ll find the clarified sound as kempt as Brown’s guitarwork.