Lacquered by legendary Los Angeles mastering engineer Bernie Grundman. Packaged in a thick, tip-on sleeve and includes a unique, oversize booklet with extensive notes on each album, the Black Fire collective, and the musical and cultural revolution they created.
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about
Washington DC’s Experience Unlimited issued their first album, Free Yourself, on the Black Fire label in 1977. Black Fire is most famous for the records issued for Spiritual Jazz heavyweights Oneness of Juju, but the label issued a series of other soul, funk and jazz albums. Free Yourself is the rarest and most sought after – and for good reason. While Experience Unlimited had started out as a high school Black Rock ensemble in the early 1970s, and while Jimi Hendrix remained a key inspiration (he’s thanked on the original album’s back cover), the ensemble mixed in bits and pieces from afro–Latin, and jazz amidst a heavy serving of from funk for their debut. They grabbed as much from major-label soul stars like Stevie Wonder and the Soul Searchers as they did from like-minded, indie D.C. groups like Brute, Aggression, T.A.A.C.K., and Public Notice, all of whom had documented their ideas in regional studios by 1977.
‘Free Yourself’ saw the band using acoustic guitar to underscore Wayne Davis’s haunting vocal harmonies on its ballad “People,” at the same time that it offered up a raucous, then-contemporary hip-hop breakbeat on “Funky Consciousness.” Overall themes of love, understanding, peace, freedom, and social awareness directly reflected the group’s evolution from their earliest basement days to bastions of D.C.’s Black community with their The House Of Peace store and community center. This is a major album within the Deep Funk canon and has withstood the test of time to be certified as classic.
Alongside this album, currently offered exclusively to Vinyl Me, Please’s subscription, we have produced limited runs of four key Spiritual Jazz titles by Oneness of Juju, including a previously unreleased live set, recorded in 1973 at the legendary Brooklyn venue The East.
credits
released July 2, 2020
Arranged By – Experience Unlimited*
Arranged By [Vocals Arranged By] – Wayne Davis (2)
Art Direction [Reissue Art Direction] – Errol F. Richardson
Artwork [Original Artwork, Print] – Allen Jackson (2)
Artwork [Original Artwork], Art Direction [Original Art Direction] – Malik Edwards
Bass, Vocals – Gregory "Sugar Bear" Eliot
Congas, Vocals, Percussion – “Pops” Andre Lucas
Drums – Anthony “Block” Easton
Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals – Donald R. Fields
Electric Piano, Organ, Clavinet – Michael Hughes
Engineer – Robert Dawson
Lacquer Cut By – Bernie Grundman
Liner Notes – Kevin Coombe
Other [Licensed Courtesy Of] – James "Plunky Nkabinde" Branch
Percussion, Wood Block – "Nivram" Marvin Coward
Producer [Associate Production] – Cameron Schaefer
Producer [Original Sessions Produced By] – Charles C. Stephenson, James "Jimmy" Gray*
Producer [This Version Of The Album Produced By] – Eothen Alapatt
Recorded By – Robert Dawson
Tenor Saxophone, Vocals – Clarence "Oscar" Smith
Timbales, Vocals, Percussion – David Williams (49)
Trombone, Vocals, Percussion – Greylin T. Hunter
Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Percussion – Philip Harris (3)
Vocals – Bobby Owens, Donna M. Taylor, Melva "Lady" Adams, Wayne Davis (2)
this is one of those rare jazz albums that's so infectious and catchy. smooth, and calculated. I didnt know anything about these guys until listening to this project. feel in love with it. defintely worth a listen Reuben Goddard
a work of genius.
love the space between jb's horn playing and the digital. they lead you down different paths to the same destination. head, heart & feet on different tips but syncopated beautifully.
vol.2 please, and more. CitizensofSound
Originally self-released in 1972, “Energy Control Center” was a political firebrand that took society to task. Forty-six years later, it burns with the same intensity. Bandcamp Album of the Day Dec 14, 2018