When Poets of Rhythm founding members Jay and Max Whitefield traveled from
their native Munich to New York in 1998 to record their eponymous debut
album, Sharon Jones was a name only known to the cult that bought her first,
rare 45s, The Dap Kings didn’t exist and The El Michels Affair were teenagers
gigging as the Mighty Imperials. Rough, raw, real funk music was decidedly out of
vogue. Though the Poets had dutifully released dozens of 45s and a few key LPs
showcasing their modern take on the funk sound, their releases remained for a
chosen few. Back then, “African influenced funk” meant “sounds like Fela.” But the
first American “real funk” label, Desco, was on the verge, Desco’s owner Phillipe
Lehman, a deep fan of funk music from both the American and African continents,
searched for a new approach.
Thus, the idea that Jay and Max presented to him – record an album chock full
of funk music influenced by the African diaspora, an album as indebted to the
Meters as to Mr. Kuti and his Africa 70, an album as psychedelic as those Ghanaian
and Nigerian masterpieces by unknown psych-funk heroes such as Blo,
Edazawa and the Psychedelic Aliens – sat perfectly with him. Desco co-founder
Gabriel Roth (later the co-founder of Daptone Records and leader of The Dap
Kings) brought his bass and arranged the album’s horns alongside Jay. A teenage
Leon Michels, as in El Michels himself, played sax and flute. So did Daptone
co-founder Neal Sugarman and Antibalas founder Martin Perna. Jay and Max’s
compositions came to life and the record was mixed, mastered - and quickly
shelved. Desco soon folded and it wasn’t until 2001, when Lehman founded Soul
Fire Records, that the album, alongside exclusive songs released only on a rare 7”
and an even more obscure 10,” saw release as In The Raw.
And that was, basically, it. Soul Fire sold a small number of vinyl LPs, and as many
CDs as they could self-distribute. And the CD quickly went out of print. Like
Desco, Soul-Fire soon folded. The Whitefield Brothers debut album, regarded as
a masterpiece by those lucky enough to have heard it, languished as a “collectible”
– eBay fodder for the cognoscenti.
The Whitefield Brothers are almost done with their long awaited follow up
album to In The Raw. Now-Again Records has worked closely with Jan and Max
to assemble a reissue of their first, crucial piece of the funk spectrum. This is
wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve, hypnotic, defiantly psychedelic funk music that
is as modern as it is grounded in the great musical traditions from both sides of
the Atlantic Ocean.

Whitefield Brothers

Earthology

Now Again

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