Junior Mance – Thank You Falletin Me Be Mice Elf Agin
Junior Mance – Don’t Cha Hear Me Callin’ To Ya
Junior Mance – Well I’ll Be White Black
Pasadena Record Swap is coming this Sunday, as it does on the first Sunday of each new month. I’ve only been able to go a handful of times, but I always run into something nice when I do. A couple of months ago I ran into this record, which I strangely don’t run into as often as I’d expect that I would. I’m pretty sure the first time I got a copy of this was at Groove Merchant, while buzzing through the “Breaks” section. “Thank You” starts off with massive drums, which should be very familiar to fans of A Tribe Called Quest. This is not a “one-tracker,” with actually quite a few super solid funky tracks, with Mance’s soulful piano, Billy Cobham and Chuck Rainey’s popping rhythm and the often surprisingly psychedelic guitar of Eric Gale. Running into this time around made me realize that “Well I’ll Be White Black” isn’t “We’ll Be White Black” which is what I’ve been thinking that title was for at least a decade. One day I hope I find out why Cobham chose that particular play on words. Definitely seems like there’s a story to tell about that one.
Speaking of stories, I pulled this particular copy while at the record fair at the kind of vendor who I generally avoid. Totally random guy, not likely to ever be there again, with a gang of records flowing out of his van. Literally, just boxes of records hanging out in the dude’s van. Most vendors take the time to organize their albums, alphabetically, by genre, by price, but organized. This was just random records in even more random boxes and the vast majority of them weren’t at all what I was looking for. This album just happened to be sitting at the front of a pile of records. That was enough to draw me in and give it the whole college try, but digging through all the other records didn’t produce anything even close to this. Next time, I’ll probably just cut and run with what I can see. But then again, the thrill of the hunt, the possibility of digging for gold is part of what brings us out to record swaps and record meets. You never know what you may find. In this case the only record I found was one that had been on my mind (got to love it when that happens) and getting reacquainted with this classic was worth the time wasted in that van.
Cheers,
Michael