Ain't It Funky Now

100 Macnasty jams

Mid-November, 1969. 11 year old me hops on my bike, rides the six blocks to the local Wellington Car Stereo shop to buy the latest batch of 45s I heard on the radio. Stations of choice for me at the time here in Philly, on the AM dial, were WDAS and Famous 56 - WFIL. ‘FIL leaned heavily into Top 40. ‘DAS rocked the “soul sounds.”My lifelong love of R&B, soul, and funk goes directly back to my listening to WDAS, thanks to my Uncle Arnie (my dad’s brother) who lived with his family (my first cousins) a block away.

I’d often find myself at their house, and Uncle Arnie (the first ‘serious’ music fan I ever met) knew it all - Sly, Kool & The Gang, The Friends of Distinction, Bobby Womack, The Intruders, The Delfonics, The Dells, The Originals. Through repeated listening sessions and some very passionate lectures, I grew to love the soul of soul music, all harmonies and grooves and songs about heartache (as much as a 10/11 year old could understand about heartache at the time).

It was on ‘DAS where I first heard James Brown’s now classic “Ain’t It Funky Now.” JB certainly had a bunch of hits before this one was released, however it was this song that caught my attention about who James Brown was.

Back to my bike ride.

In the 60s into the mid 70s, many stations around the country published weekly music surveys that would sit on the counters of record stores. These weekly surveys became both my shopping lists and my Bible.

Added to my list of 45s I wanted to buy, I embarked on that bike ride, and got my weekly stock of new jams, paying three bucks or so for about 5 or 6 new singles. When I got to the store, I didn’t see “Ain’t It Funky Now” on the list and asked the girl behind the counter if they had it in stock. At the time, I didn’t know that the really cool record store workers had like a special stash of cool shit behind the counter. “Ain’t It Funky Now” wasn’t on display cause it wasn’t yet on the weekly music survey, but they had copies of it. I grabbed it, and added it to my stack of new 45s to checkout.

“Ain’t It Funky Now” was the first record that I ever bought that had as it’s A-side “Part One,” and it’s B-Side, “Part Two.” I mean, this was some mind blowing shit at the time for 11 year old me.

I couldn’t afford lps at the time, but it was my Uncle Arnie who told me about “album versions” of songs, and how bands would put “shorter” versions of songs on 45s, cause there were technological limitations. Ok. That made some sense.

I burned the grooves off of both sides of that 45. “Funky” is often a starting point for me when I’m DJing on the radio and I want to go down on funky street for a bit, or a playlist where the groove is your only guide. Which is what I’ve put together on one of my more recent playlists below. This funky excursion includes trips down the funky side of jazz, R&B and soul. Leans on the instrumentals a bit, but as JB often says: “Good God y’all.”