I’m continuing to go through my tapes from long ago. An especially good one is from just after that big break up I wrote about last time. Unfortunately, it has some obscure stuff on it that even Shazzam can’t figure out, including a very weird version of the William Tell Overture.¹ I loved getting obscure music on those tapes, and now it’s biting me on the butt, when I can’t find it again.
One track jumped out at me: “Tukka Yoot’s Riddim” by US3. What a great song. Great rhythm, and exciting rap on top. Just a really fun and positive song. When it came out in Nineteen *mumble mumble*, it blew me away. Even moreso than their hit “Cantaloop”. And it was the start of good vibes on that particular mix, after a whole lotta bad.
And that’s the song I wanted to bring to you today.
But wait. As I was checking out allmusic’s entry on US3, I learned a little backstory, including how they found themselves with access to the Blue Note catalog. The legend back in the day that these guys were so great, they were able to dive into the most coveted backlog in recording history. So here was the story, front and center: There was a song called “The Band That Played the Boogie”² produced by Geoff Wilkinson and Mel Simpson; the song was released by “NW1”. It had some jazz samples in it, and in 1992, the era of “all samples cleared“, the original owners of the samples had to okay who sampled what.
Well. I’d never heard the original song (nor had learned its name). But here we are in the age of digitizing everything, naturally, the song is online. Holy cats! It’s the same song as Tukka Yoot’s Riddim! But with a much less compelling rap (sorry) over the top. Which shows that a good vocal can change everything.
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¹ Did you know Glen Campbell did an electric guitar version? It’s pretty smokin’. The version on my tape wasn’t Campbell’s, but his is the closest I could find. (Update: See this post for an update!)
² Not the 1973 CCS song by the same name that starts out, “The high school hooker was once a good looker / The teenage queen, now she wants a gas cooker.” Not exactly lyrics that inspire in 2022. But the 70s had a lot of these kinds of songs about the downfall of dreams. See “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” by Billy Joel, for instance. But CCS is the band to see if you want an instrumental cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”, with a flute standing in for Plant’s blistering vocals (which itself was a cover of Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love”).