Fred Cancio – Can’t Get Enough
Fred Cancio – Ain’t Lonely No More
Fred Cancio – Peace

I’m not sure there’s a greater joy than finding a record that you would never expect to have a massive drum break, but does in fact have a massive drum break on it. In some ways it’s what motivates many of us vinyl addicts and crate diggers. That chance to strike gold on a record that barely anyone else knows. While it has happened a handful of times to me, in most cases, a bit like buying rare gems from an amazing jewelry store, it’s much more likely that I pick up one of these records from some other collector, in this case from the one and only DJ Shadow.

As I mentioned in the October “Moods,” this one was a record that if I saw it in the bins at Rappcats, I likely completely skipped over it. The record gods smiled on me twice this day though, first when Shadow played “Can’t Get Enough” over the house speakers and I heard those massive drums, and second, when despite how amazing those drums are, no one decided to buy the album before me.

From what little I could gather, Fred Cancio and his family (his wife Cookie is responsible for the album’s design) preached and sang the gospel through the US, perhaps also abroad, for many years, up until his death in 2019. He has a lovely, booming, voice and sings these devotional tunes with great sincerity, but it is the band that most drew me to this record. Unfortunately, aside from some credits to Gary Tosti, there isn’t any information on the musicians who recorded the funky backing tracks on the best tunes here on this LP, and I have no clue who the stellar drummer is. To my ears they sound too polished and too locked in to “just” be local musicians from a La Habra church. What they add to “Can’t Get Enough,” and “Peace” gives the feel of a seasoned Jazz or Funk band. It is highly likely I’ll never find out who the musicians were on this album and that is often the case with private press records such as these. But, in some ways that is exactly their charm. In the mysteries that remain after initial discovery, there is always the possibility that there may be more gold to mine some day in the future.

Today would have been Matthew Africa’s 50th Birthday. Every year around this time we pay tribute to Matthew here on Melting Pot, without a doubt one of the most influential musical presences in my life. Today I spent most of the day, along with other record nerds, digging through DJ Shadow’s Storage Sale at Rappcats. Shadow and Matthew knew each other well and according to Shadow, they used to try to blow the others mind with some strange and obscure album that they hoped the other wouldn’t know. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during one of those listening sessions, but I’m thankful for the years spent around Matthew and for the privilege to dig through Shadow’s collection. It was quite fitting that amongst the records I pulled, there was a 45 that Matthew (along with B.Cause) included on what might be my all-time favorite mix, Soul Boulders 2. It’s always a joy running into one of the records from that mix, or discovering new “soul boulders,” and wondering if Matthew had a copy (or two or three knowing Matthew). I felt like it made sense to highlight a few other 45s that are on that mix, as a tribute to Matthew this year.

Daz Rene – Change

This 45 is the one that actually starts off the Soul Boulders 2 mix. I had no clue what it was but one day feeling braze, I just asked B. Cause and he told me it was Daz Rene’s “Change,” something that I also recognized from Gonjasufi/Gaslamp Killer sample around the same time. That bass line hits so deep, every time I swear I feel it in my soul.

Leon Haywood – As Long As There’s You

On the Soul Boulders 2 mix, Matthew and B. Cause do a little studio trickery with this track, which extends some instrumental parts that are not in the this original single edition. As with most of the remixes Matthew did during his life, the changes are very subtle and take nothing away from the original, but only add layers that you never knew needed to be added, but once hearing them you wish were there in the original.

Webs – It’s So Hard (To Break A Habit)

Quite possibly the single best transition I’ve ever heard in any DJ mix (and over the years, I have heard many a DJ mix) is the transition out of Leon Haywood’s “Long As There’s You,” into Webs’ “It’s So Hard.” If you’ve never heard, it’s a true thing of beauty, two songs perfectly placed together and perfectly timed in the mix to create magic. This song is one of the deepest soul songs I’ve heard, one that you really feel the emotion of the lead singer in every cry, all matched beautifully by the background harmonies throughout. An ace tune if there ever was one.

Chain Reaction – Lady In Red

This one is the most recent addition to my collection of Soul Boulders, picked up at the most recent DJ Shadow storage sale. “Lady In Red,” is an interesting song, aside from its musical charms. Despite multiple listens I still can’t tell if this is a anti-sex worker or pro-sex worker tune. Perhaps it can be seen each way, perhaps the titular “lady” isn’t a sex worker at all, but based on the lyrics it certainly seems so (especially that “I’ll be much older then but you’ll still be the same” line), and regardless of the intent, it is a singularly special song and one I likely never would have discovered absent the influence from Matthew & B. Cause on Soul Boulders 2.

Sass – I Only Wanted To Love You

The last track that I’ve chosen for this MKA tribute comes from the Bay Area in the form of Sass’ “I Only Wanted To Love You.” I know this song was released in 1976, but there’s something about the sound of it that messes with my mind as if it should be from a later date. I think it’s that synthesizer that’s just hanging out in the background. Maybe it’s the vocals that just remind me of 1980s quiet storm tracks. I don’t know what it is about this track that casts such a spell over me, and in all honesty, I don’t really want to ever know. I just appreciate that it’s one of my absolute favorite Soul Boulders, and ever thankful that Matthew (and this is one that I’m 99% sure Matthew brough into the mix) included it in the Soul Boulders 2 mix and brought it into my life. Just as I am so thankful for the memories and all the other music Matthew brought into my life…There will never be another, he was my brother. RIP MKA

William Fischer – Bat Bi Hiru Lau
William Fischer – Bat Bi Hiru Lau (Vocal Version)
William Fischer – Eguntto Batez
William Fischer – Eguntto Batez (Vocal Version)
William Fischer – Xarmangarria
William Fischer – Xarmangarria (Vocal Version)
William Fischer – Txori Erresinula

This record is a bit of a mystery, on multiple fronts.  I’m not sure where I first came into contact with it, or saw it, but I’m fairly certain after talking to him, that these recordings first came onto my radar from one of Egon’s pop-ups at Rappcats, where he was selling this version of Akelarre Sorta with its an exceptional cover.

I didn’t get the record on that day, but the distinctiveness of the cover stuck with me, and eventually I had to do some digital digging to discover more about the music on it.  What I discovered quite literally blew my mind, with some seriously funky sounds along with vocals that were in the Basque language.  The reason this blew my mind wasn’t even entirely because of how it all sounded, but mostly because I hadn’t realized that there were ANY recordings of music with Basque vocals during this period of time.  For those not aware, during the Fascist dictatorship of Franco in Spain, regional culture/dialects, such as Catalan and Euskara were outlawed.  In Catalunya, during this time, it meant that one of the only avenues where you could celebrate your culture was at matches for FC Barcelona, but the situation was even more precarious for Basque folk, particularly after ETA began their campaign.  While Catalan clearly has some connection to other romance languages, sounding like a largely novel mix of Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, Euskara is something else entirely.  It’s one of the few languages in all of Europe that is entirely unrelated to any other existing languages.  I’ve only gotten a chance to dig for records in Spain a couple of times, so I’m not sure if there are more records to be found, but given all I knew of Spain’s history, I recognized that this record had to be a fairly unique thing when it was recorded and released in 1971, four years before Franco’s death and the establishment of the current democracy in the country.

But the fact this record featured vocals in Basque was only one mystery, because I soon discovered that before this album was released, there was an entirely instrumental record that was released, and the vocals were added to some of those songs.  What made this mysterious was the direction of American composer/musician William Fischer. 

Fischer is a bit of an enigma, not releasing a large body of work, but what records that can be found are certainly idiosyncratic.  The most widely available is the avant-funk-fusion album Circles on Embryo records, recorded roughly around the same time as Akelarre Sorta.  After tracking down a copy of the vocal version of these songs and then discovering that there was an entire album of instrumental material, my music obsessive mind just HAD to track that one down to.

I was lucky enough to find a pristine copy from a Basque collector in Spain by the name of Jon Navarro.  He told me of how when he discovered this album in the 1990s he went understandably crazy since the melodies that Fischer employs on these wildly funky songs were all from Basque folk tunes that Navarro had grown up on.  How Fischer came to know these songs, what he was doing in Spain, who he was employing as musicians on the record, all of that, remains a complete mystery.

The liner notes on the original instrumental record, which are extensive in length and in Euskara, French and Spanish (but notably not Catalan), are no help whatsoever with these mysteries (the same is the case on the later vocal version, pictured above).  The name “Akelarre Sorta” more or less translates to “Witches’ Sabbath,” and the liner notes, roughly translated below into English, follow that theme but say next to nothing about the actual music.

“Satanologists, sorcerers, specialists in various forms of palingenesis, talmudists of fame, and other scholars in Sorgiñología, agree to affirm the identity between environment and music in the old akelarres. Burned some of our witches by the Roman Inquisition, the others took refuge in their underground dwellings.

A fantastic world was formed then. Sorgiñas and Basque sorcerers persecuted by the hisopazos of Pierre de Lancre, allied with a Jewish gnome travel-which was said to be a cousin of Spinoza-contacted the subterranean spirits of some blacks, cimarrones escaped from the brutal raids that our European ancestors, on behalf of of civilization, performed in Africa.

From time to time, thanks to magical formulas and ointments, they surfaced…A happy conjunction of subterranean efforts caused the fall of the Bastille…And of the old Aviraneta, it was said that he was mixed in suspicious practices.

Chaho himself was seen, several times, at night, with a black kapusai, a sack, a squadron and a map of the world, in a gorge near Itxasu, where there was a very favorable tectonic fault, trying to make contact with the crypto-sorgiñes…Three phosphorescent owl-shaped figures preceded him… and a learned fundamentalist author seriously affirms that from that strange coyunda the satanic pact that led to the creation of a particularly evil carbon sect to which Garibaldi, Rawachol, the Sorcerer of Bargota and a mysterious Russian with a beard and bowler hat. For something the reaction spoke of contubernios and hidden forces!

Today we have no doubt that psychedelic music is extremely propitious to the old goblins and that…Well, listen to the disc. And please, do not charge any possible defects in our account. At the last minute, poor Maria Zozaya, Basque witch burned in the eighteenth century, but redivizes the year 1968 thanks to the latest palingenésicas techniques of Mr. Lovecraft enimschol-kai-takos … -and we do not say any more in case someone comes up resuscitate General Espartero-, escaped, abandoning the project, before the news, certainly chilling, that reached his underground dwelling on a certain local critic, we do not know if San Sebastian or San Sebastian. And it is that, with palingenesia or without it, also the witches reach menopause. Please excuse us.”

So, ultimately, all we are left with is the music, along with the vocal versions in Basque, sung by Fernando Unsain. The lead track “Bat Bi Hur Lau” (“One, Two, Three, Four) sounds like it would be perfectly suited to half a dozen Blaxploitation soundtracks, though it takes on a totally different feel with Basque lyrics. “Eguntto Banez” (Being One Day) is seriously one of the dopest, deepest funk songs I’ve ever heard, just the way it builds and builds and builds and then completely explodes with the guitar solo at the end. They made the right choice to close the vocal album with that track, since at the start of the 2nd side on the instrumental album it leaves you entirely exhausted with four more tracks to go. Each of them is fairly mellow though giving you time to recover (and there was no way I wasn’t gonna play one for my most recent Moods focused on that feeling), with “Xarmangarria” (You Are Charming) being the representative that I’m sharing. The instrumental album closes with a track that isn’t featured on the vocal one, “Txori Erresinula” (Mockingbird), which those of you who have dogs may want to play just to see the perplexed look on your pup’s face when they hear the wild keyboard/synth sounds that Fischer produces near the end.

Given that he often has a line on musicians and producers of the 1960s & 1970s, having discovered all that I had about this music, I asked Egon if he knew any more about this album or if he’d been able to discuss it with William Fischer, but unfortunately that was not the case, as Fischer has dementia.  Egon did mention that someone was working with Fischers archive and perhaps something down the line may come out with Numero Group, but for the moment, all of that is just speculation. But, with that being all that it is, and the possibility that this record will largely remain a mystery, what we do have is a mighty mighty sound.  One that I am thankful came across my radar and that I am able to share here. 

Rahsaan Roland Kirk – I Talk With The Spirits
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – The Business Ain’t Nuthin’ But The Blues
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Ruined Castles
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Serenade To A Cuckoo

No matter how deep my depression may get or how it may be affecting me personally, there is one absolute truism in my life these days, and that is that I NEVER miss Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s birthday or posting up an album from his mighty discography on this hallowed day here on Melting Pot.  This year’s selection is another one of those Limelight albums that is packaged in an exceptionally distinctive way.  In contrast to all of the colors of Rip, Rig & Panic, the packaging for I Talk With The Spirits employs only Black & White.  The starkness of the colors does nothing to dim the beauty of the record’s cover.  When I thought about posting this record today, it had been a while since I’d looked at this record, and I thought that I just had a regular edition, without the special packaging emblematic of this series.

But then I noticed the almost imperceptible crease that ran across the picture of Rahsaan. Flip that over and the liner notes begin with an essay from Michael Zwerin that describes Rahsaan in the following ways, “…He is all music…there is music emanating from his every pore…the more one listens to Roland the more extraordinary he seems. There are always new experiences for the listener.”

Aside from the gorgeous packaging, what makes this record unique is that it was the first time that Rahsaan had solely played Flute on a recording. “Spirits” includes what might be Rahsaan’s most well-known track (at least to those who don’t consider themselves fans of his music already) “Serenade To A Cuckoo,” a track that was a major influence on Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and many others in the British scene. As famous and familiar as that song is, it’s not even remotely the best or most memorable track on the album, at least not to my ears. The title track, described as “elegiac” in the liner notes has an almost otherworldly quality to it. The same can be said of “Ruined Castles,” one of the shorter, but most affecting pieces on the album. It’s always fascinating to me hearing Rahsaan’s music and the many broad and diverse textures and tones that he brought out in his recordings. Listening to these selections I hear sounds I’d never heard before, even though I’ve had some version of this record for over 25 years now. As Zwerin mentioned, there is always some new experience to discover, and that is just part of the reason that he remains my favorite musician of all-time and the patron saint of Melting Pot…Bright Moments!