Essential Funk on Vinyl: A Starter's Guide
Ask ten regulars at our counter what funk is and you will get ten answers: a drummer's answer, a bass player's answer, a DJ's answer. Drop the needle on any record below and the argument settles itself. Funk is rhythm promoted to lead instrument, the downbeat treated like home, and it is the foundation under half of what we sell, from hip-hop to house to modern R&B.
The ten records below are the ones we hand people first. Every pick is a modern pressing we carry, chosen because it is the right record, not the convenient one. Work through the list and you will touch the founder, the family band, the mothership, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the 80s handoff. When you are ready to dig past these ten, the funk, soul and disco collection is the bin to browse.
James Brown - The Payback Vinyl LP
Funk has a founding father, and this is his hardest record. James Brown cut The Payback in 1973 as the soundtrack for the film Hell Up in Harlem, and the producers turned it down, one of the great wrong calls in movie history. Released that December on Polydor, it is the leanest, meanest groove of his career, and the title track has been feeding sample crates ever since. Start your shelf here and everything else on this list makes sense. We also carry two very different sides of the man: Soul on Top, his swaggering big band session, and the live At Studio 54 New York City.
Sly & the Family Stone - Best Of (180g Music on Vinyl) Vinyl LP
Sly Stone took gospel, psychedelia, and soul, put them all in one integrated band, and made rhythm the message. This Music On Vinyl double LP walks the whole 1968 to 1974 run: "Dance to the Music," "Everyday People," "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," "Family Affair," "If You Want Me to Stay." A compilation this complete is the honest starting point; the full albums Stand! and There's a Riot Goin' On are the deep dives to hunt down once you are hooked. For the prehistory, Stone Soul: The Origins of Sly and The Family Stone traces where that sound came from.
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain Vinyl LP
This is the rock end of funk. The story goes that George Clinton told guitarist Eddie Hazel to play like he had just lost his mother, and the ten minute title track that came out of it is one of the most devastating guitar performances ever put to tape. Released in 1971 on Westbound, the album swings from acid rock to street corner harmony without ever losing the pocket. We also carry its wilder sibling Free Your Mind and Hazel's own Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs, the solo album guitar heads whisper about.
Parliament - Mothership Connection Vinyl LP
Same ringleader, different spaceship. Parliament was George Clinton's chrome plated, horn driven counterpart to Funkadelic, and Mothership Connection, released in 1975 on Casablanca, is the defining P-Funk statement. Bootsy Collins holds down the bass, Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley bring the horn discipline they learned in James Brown's band, and "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" does exactly what its title promises. Bootsy's own records carry the mythology forward; we stock Ultra Wave and One Giveth The Count Taketh Away.
Curtis Mayfield - Superfly (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (180g) Vinyl LP
Funk with a conscience. Hired to score a hustler picture, Curtis Mayfield handed back a 1972 album on his own Curtom label that argues with the movie scene by scene. "Freddie's Dead" and "Pusherman" tell harder truths than the film they accompanied, delivered in that weightless falsetto while the wah guitar and congas underneath do the preaching. It is Chicago soul grown up into pure funk architecture. His 1971 album Roots is the next reach, and the solo debut Curtis, which came before both, is worth asking about at the counter.
Herbie Hancock - Headhunters (200G) Vinyl LP
Jazz noticed what Sly Stone was doing, and Head Hunters is what it did about it. Hancock even named a track "Sly" in tribute. Released in 1973 on Columbia, it strips his band down to a lean electric unit with Bennie Maupin on reeds, and "Chameleon" opens on one of the most recognizable synthesizer bass figures ever recorded, while the reworked "Watermelon Man" starts with Bill Summers blowing across a beer bottle. This 200 gram pressing gives the record the low end it was built around. For where Hancock took funk next, Sunlight is the vocoder chapter.
The Meters - A Message from The Meters: The Complete Josie, Reprise, & Warner Bros. Singles '68-77 Vinyl LP
New Orleans funk is its own dialect, and the Meters wrote the phrasebook: Art Neville, Leo Nocentelli, George Porter Jr., and Zigaboo Modeliste, tight as a second line drum. Their classic era ran on 45s, which makes this Real Gone collection of the complete Josie, Reprise, and Warner Bros. singles from 1968 to 1977 the definitive way in. "Sophisticated Cissy," "Cissy Strut," and a stack of grooves that have been sampled half to death, all in one place. The 1970 album Struttin' digs deeper into the Josie years.
The Isley Brothers - At Their Very Best Vinyl LP
Few catalogs cover more ground than the Isleys: shout along soul, burning funk rock, and the slow jams that taught quiet storm its manners. This double LP earns its title, running from "It's Your Thing" and "That Lady" through "Fight the Power" to "Footsteps in the Dark" and "Between the Sheets." Ernie Isley's fuzz guitar is the family's secret weapon; nobody else made a solo sound that sweet over a groove that mean. Go deeper with Go For Your Guns, their 1977 album, or grab Footsteps in the Dark on a 45 for the DJ bag.
War - Greatest Hits (Brick & Mortar Exclusive) Vinyl LP
Los Angeles funk rolled slower. War folded Latin percussion, blues harmonica, and street corner harmony into a lowrider glide nobody has matched since. This is the classic 1976 collection, back in print as an exclusive for shops like ours, and it plays wall to wall: "Slippin' Into Darkness," "The Cisco Kid," "Why Can't We Be Friends?," "Low Rider." If a summer block party had a house band, it would sound like this. The 1972 album The World Is a Ghetto is the full length masterpiece to seek out once these hooks have you.
Rick James - Street Songs (180g) Vinyl LP
Funk did not end when the 70s did; it bought a synthesizer and kept moving. Street Songs, released in 1981 on Motown's Gordy imprint, is the sound of the music striding into a new decade: "Give It to Me Baby" and "Super Freak" up front, and "Fire and Desire," his duet with Teena Marie, closing the show. Rick James called it punk funk. We call it the record that keeps the 80s end of this story honest. The singles collection Reflections rounds up the rest of the run.
Ten records in, you have the spine of the whole story. The funk, soul and disco collection is where the digging continues, and the 1970s albums bin catches everything the decade did around it. Come by the shop and tell us what should have been number eleven; that argument is the whole point of a list like this.
