Gene Therapy

I'm dropping by with a birthday post I just can't resist sharing because it's that great, and also using that as an excuse to announce a new era for this page, beginning very soon.

We'll get to the details at the bottom of the page, but we'll reserve the top column inches for today's birthday guy, who's been dead more than a decade, yet whose influence is firmly established as immortal.

He only made a few records on his own, and several were in a more youthful-n-innocent incarnation as a kind of gospel-soul prototype.

Those were at the start of the 1960s. By that transformative decade's end, he had morphed entirely into something then-unprecedented: a leftist funk songwriter, like some sort of cross between Donnie Hathaway and Woody Guthrie.

He never had hits or made much of a dent with his own, uncompromising brand of it, but other artists had massive smashes with his songs.

His most famous song is considered one of the top 10 protest anthems of all time, and has been recorded countless times by countless artists -- almost 300 versions exist -- from Roberta Flack to John Legend... yet no recording by the man himself appears to have ever been released.

Some of the most legendary samples in Hip-Hop come from his records, and he is thought of as one of the antecedents or Godfathers of that form by most people who know the history.

I play his handful of 1970s albums all the time, and he's one of the people I go back to again and again, so it's a privilege to get to cover him on this page.

It's Black History Month too, so it's absolutely spot on time to wish a happy 87th birthday to Eugene McDaniels, one of the Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse.

It's too bad he ain't still around, because it'd be a hoot to hear what he'd be singing about the current crop of babbling, omnicidal fascists running the ship into the rocks.

To commemorate the man, we'll share this way-outta-print record that's (pitifully) never seen the light of day as per a digital reissue.

This is from 1972, when Gene formed a band with some other folks for a minute. All of the tunes, and most of the vocals, are his. Luckily there's a beautiful vinyl transfer of this all-killer, no-filler platter floating about, which I meticulously declicked a while back.

Universal Jones
"Universal Jones, Vol. 1"

1972

01 We All Know a Lot of Things But It Don't Never Show

02 Takin' Care of Business

03 Feeling That Glow

04 Tuesday Morning

05 Good Love Man

06 Hello to the Wind

07 River

08 Sidewalk Man

Total time: 39:31

Eugene McDaniels - vocals & guitar

Sister Charlotte - vocals & percussion

Leon Pendarvis - bass, piano & vocals

Carol Kaye - bass

Milt Hinton - bass

Bob Woos - bass & guitars

Maurice McKinley - drums & percussion

Jerry Dodgion - alto saxophone

Pepper Adams - baritone saxophone

Andy Gadsden, Billy Harper - tenor saxophones

Bob Greivell, Garnett Brown - trombones

Joe Dupars, Joe Gardner, John Mosley, Thad Jones - trumpets

Alfred Brown, Bernard Eichen, Raoul Poliakin - violins

Allan Shulman, Ron Lipscomb - cellos

Barbara Massey, Carla Beckley, Jean Dushon - vocals

tremendous vinyl transfer of the 1972 MGM LP, denoised by EN a while back
213 MB FLAC/February 2022 archive link

Now, for the big announcement revelation!!!!!!!!!!

In just 8 days, if it all goes correctly, this entire blog -- all 669 posts of it -- will become available for download in the large Google Drive cloud space I purchased yesterday and which I have begun to fill with its eight years of contents.

This will be text-linked at the top of every page, and will take the reader to a date-navigable archive, set up chronologically by year and month, from which all the music I've ever posted can be accessed with ease.

OK? So no more re-ups ever needed again... anyone with a minimal amount of cognition, that can navigate a folder by year, will be able to grab any specific post. You'll even be able to get the whole thing with one click! If you're insane, that is.

I'll see y'all back here in a week, and don't sleep on Gene the Left Reverend McD either... his music is pretty birthday-suit radical, but Compared To What?--J.

2.12.1935 - 7.29.2011

left wing & right wing
political pawns in the master game
the player who controls the board sees them all as the same
basically, cannon fodder