perfidy

Who here knows from Johnny "Guitar" Watson?

I bet that right now some tiny renegade soul station in Baltimore, Detroit, D.C. or one of the other Chocolate Cites in this great land is taking a spin of "Ain't That a Bitch" or "Superman Lover," two of the biggest hits from the original Original Gangster, but let's be honest... that really isn't much of a legacy. It's much more probable that 95% of you reading this are thinking, "who the hell is Johnny "Guitar" Watson?," 3% remember him from back in the day, and the other 2% are rushing to their Zappa shelf to make sure that this is the same Johnny "Guitar" Watson who guested on One Size Fits All. Relax, fellow geeks. It is.

And this obscurity is a crying shame. The splanking-new two-disc Johnny "Guitar" Watson: The Funk Anthology (released Sep. 6 on Shout Factory) goes a long way toward placing Watson in his rightful place in funk history. If he doesn't rank right up there in front along Parliament, Sly, the Ohio Players, and James Brown, he definitely makes the elite second cut with heavy hitters like Zapp, Maceo Parker, and the Bar-Kays.

Johnny Watson, a native Texan, hit the scene in the early 1950s playing keyboard in blues bands around Houston, and he managed to get time on cuts by Albert Collins among others. A taste of his future direction would come in 1954 when Watson strapped on the axe and entered the studio to record "Space Guitar," a tour de force of hot playing and speaker-melting sound effects that was at least fifteen years ahead of its time.

Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Watson would bounce from style to style, playing blues, rock, jazz, and spaced-out super blues as his own innate sense of "what's happenin' now" demanded. From time to time, he would lob a song into the lower reaches of the charts, and he eventually built up a formidable reputation as one of the finest blues players on the West Coast.

More importantly, Watson became known as an iconoclastic, phenomenally talented trailblazer with a flair for explosive stage shows. So much, in fact, that his act became part of the musical DNA of the time and influenced the next generation of far-out acts. According to soul-blues king Bobby Womack, "Music-wise, he was the most dangerous gunslinger out there. Even when others made a lot of noise in the charts - I'm thinking of Sly Stone or George Clinton - you know they'd studied Johnny's stage style and listened very carefully to Johnny's grooves." Watson himself would claim that Jimi Hendrix was always careful to give him due credit.

Given this state of affairs, it is not surprising that in the deeply stanky depths of the 1970s, Johnny "Guitar" Watson would get his own funk on, between 1976 and 1981 releasing seven albums of R&B-flavored deep funk (plus a funk-back album in 1994) and netting about a dozen top 40 hits on the "black" charts. 1977's A Real Mother For Ya would even crack the Billboard Top 40 chart, peaking at #20.

To a certain degree the funkatization of Johnny Watson amounted to an updating of his signature sound, fusing blues changes and guitar to the deep and spacious grooves and tight horns of Parliament and the Family Stone. But Watson had his own way with the funk, incorporating a genial sense of humor and a looseness to his (skintight) grooves that set him apart from competitors.

Generally working with wah-laden rhythm guitars, thick Fender bass, chewy keyboards, and tight, curvy horn lines, Watson crafted a clean and powerful groove that was a perfect bed for his cutting guitar and slightly nasal baritone vocals. Moreover, Watson played almost every instrument on his albums except the drums. Indeed, the cover art for The Funk Anthology features a painting of Watson in his trademark suit and hat, making like an eight-armed Vishnu, Preserver of the Funk.

The Funk Anthology spans the years Watson spent standing shoulder to shoulder with spiritual children Sly Stone and George Clinton. But as Sly's music descended a hellish ladder from party jam to burned-out universal despair and Clinton's Mothership pursued the universal motorbootyprosifunkification of mankind, Watson brought the down-to-earth feel of the blues to his music and lyrics, and stayed right there. 1976's "Ain't That A Bitch," the opening cut on The Funk Anthology, complains about Carter-era inflation, a theme that would also show up in "It's All About the Dollar Bill," "A Real Mother For Ya" and the 1980 proto-rap cut "Telephone Bill." No money: it's a blues thing. And there was also the sex thing and the women thing and more than a few "damn I'm good" thangs, and a couple-few drug things too which the liner notes hint were solidly in the blues-confessional vein.

Although from time to time various references pop up to say "hi" - Bootsy Collins is a close sonic relative, and there are nods to Earth Wind & Fire, the Ohio Players, the P-Funk mob and and so on - Watson reminds me of nobody more than fellow polymaths Prince and Frank Zappa. It is not so much that Watson ever pulled out something like "Do Me Baby" or "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" as much as there's a feeling - a flavor - to music made by one person, one personality, mainly out of their own head. The Funk Anthology reminds me as much of Prince's Dirty Mind, Zappa's Joe's Garage, Shuggie Otis' Inspiration Information, and Beck's Mellow Gold, as much as it reminds me of Cut the Cake, Uncle Jam Wants You or Honey. These associations actually go a little deeper than my own imagination, too; Watson sang on Zappa's One Size Fits All, and more than a few songs on The Funk Anthology feature Zappa-esque melody lines or lyrics ("You can stay but the noise must go/ I said, oh, no!"). Clearly, this cat had a lot of weird in his life and mojo in his stick if he was hanging with Zappa.

Part of the fun in listening to The Funk Anthology is the joy in discovering today's favorite track. In the last week my loyalties have shifted between the deep, chunky blues funk of "Ain't That a Bitch," the classic "Superman Lover," and the absurd "Booty Ooty" to the sexxxier "I Want to Ta-Ta You Baby" and "Love Jones" and the more political "I Don't Want To Be President." Today I have had on auto-repeat the heretofore unreleased "Spirit of My Guitar," a five-minute instrumental that funks up the Frampton with Watson asking us through a talk box, in finest Comes Alive! fashion, "Do you feel... the spirit of my guitar?" before ripping off a smooth, tasty solo in the finest Eddie Hazel-Jimi Hendrix fashion. Both of whom, of course, got their thang from Watson in the first place. Nice.

Of course, not every track is a winner - "Miss Frisco (Queen of the Disco)" and the sub-Clintonian "Funk Beyond the Call of Duty" in my opinion notably lack the oomph, the ooty the jam that shows up elsewhere - but nonetheless The Funk Anthology is a very worthy addition to any career funkateer's library. Watson could turn out a fun jam, and a new look at his career is worthwhile if only to provide a peek at the missing link between Albert Collins and Bootsy Collins.

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Listen to "Superman Lover" in Quicktime:
http://www.shoutfactory.com/av/superman/SupermanLoverFull.mov
... or Windows Media:
http://www.shoutfactory.com/av/superman/SupermanLoverFull.wma