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