Brand new vinyl record.

• Bonus Item: 16-Page Booklet + Album Digital Download

SHIPPING TIME AND RETURN POLICY:

SHIPPING: We ship within 2 business days of payment most of the time (orders place over the weekend won't be processed until the following Monday. We ship via USPS: First Class for CDs, Media Mail for vinyl, and First Class Mail International for overseas orders (orders over 4lb require Priority Mail International). Actual shipping time varies by destination.

RETURNS: We generally do not accept returns except if something is not as described, and we take care to make sure everything fits our description. Sometimes CDs or vinyl will have a "cut-out" slice or "promo punch" either in the corner or through the UPC code - we will include this in the description if applicable. If there is a problem with an item, contact us and we will figure out the best action to take. We do NOT accept returns if you decide you simply don't like the item, or have buyer's remorse - buy wisely, and ask questions if necessary. Damage incurred during shipping should be brought up with the carrier but is extremely rare as we box everything adequately, including using extra cardboard for protection.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMBINING SHIPPING ON MULTIPLE ITEMS WE SELL:

Use "Add To Cart". Before paying, there is a button marked "Ask Seller For A Total" - click this. Wait one business day for us to change the invoice or else it will charge you full shipping for each item (we will not refund extra shipping once paid). This may not work from a phone, only a computer. We have to change shipping by hand - typically we charge what is close to the actual cost with maybe a $1 USD handling fee per item to cover the cost of packing materials.

Item Summary:

14 tracks by Jimi Macon, Black Maffia, Blacklites and more, many reissued for the first time. Includes a 16 page booklet with extensive notes on an overlooked and important portion of rock n' roll's history & a Download card to WAV files of the full album.

Nearly everyone in the world can rattle off the great African-American musical forms. Jazz, blues, R&B, soul, hip-hop, house, gospel. One influential genre is always left off of the list: a folk music known as rock n' roll. Rock n' roll was a term originally coined to market the white-friendly version of a genre that already existed; prior to 1965, the line between rock n' roll and R&B was thin: Ike Turner recorded and released "Rocket '88' " in 1951 and, while its Chess Records release reached number one on the Billboard R&B chart, it is regarded by many as the first rock n' roll record.

The Great Divide between R&B and rock n' roll came after the Beatles and the British Invasion decimated the Top 40 chart in 1964. Simultaneously, R&B entered a new phase, soon to be labeled "soul," which upped the music's gospel quotient and turned its frantic twang. So somewhere in the mid to late 1960s, rock n' roll became perceived as something for the Caucasian kids. When Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee made the scene, they were said to be black musicians entering into a white world. While that couldn't be farther from the truth, that false dichotomy has existed in America's popular conscious ever since, to the point where the idea of a black rock musician is on the level with the idea of a black cowboy.

In the mid-1960s, funk replaced soul as the rhythm that was going to move the world. We know all its progenitor - James Brown, The Meters, Kool & The Gang - and their innovations: the syncopated, 4/4 dance between the bass and drums, horns repurposed as percussion, chicken-scratch and wah-wah guitar. We can trace where they came from. But there is one crucial funk influence that no one seems to want to acknowledge – a devil-may-care attitude we can attribute to rock n' roll. It's not a stretch to say that funk is the African-American answer to psychedelia and hard rock rolled into one.

The idea of "progressivism" that took over rock music after psychedelia's heyday in the late 1960s belatedly spilled over to funk. In the early 1970s, as the underground/psychedelic fire burnt out in the white rock world, it roared to a blaze in the black musical community. Nearly every American city with a large black population boasted self-contained funk bands that didn't consider themselves simply revues or backup groups, but rather fully-operational ensembles In these bands, everything from composing, arranging, record production and distribution, was handled in house by band members. These are the bands whose music comprises this anthology, and while they're all different, they're unique in one way: they kept their ears open for new developments in funk and rock music.

This anthology presents earnest questions as to why we know so little about these bands and the movement of which they were a part. While we don't anticipate that we'll ever find a definitive answer as to what these ensembles' true goals were, then, we do know that they took their charges seriously. And they knew they were onto something different, something that, though only they and their immediate kin might recognize it, was more interesting than the status quo. Function Underground shines light on an important and overlooked part of rock n' roll's history and talented ensembles that toiled in the shadows, derided by their peers.

'Do you realize that Hendrix was dead before most black people in America knew he was a black man?" Ebony Rhythm Band drummer Matthew Watson questions rhetorically. "We was scorned. In that era, everybody else in the black community was wearing three-piece suits, processes and Afro wigs and that shit. We was the first guys to wear bell bottoms. The first guys to wear big hats. We were off into a whole other thing."