Search - Various Artists :: Blue Break Beats 1-4

Since its birth, jazz has influenced all forms of American popular music, right on up to the hip-hop scene that emerged in the late '70s. In the '40s, beboppers took the chord progressions of composers like George Gershwin and remade them into their own virtuosic masterpieces. Today, DJs and producers take the hippest bass-drum breaks, horn lines, and melodic snippets from the funkiest jazz cuts of the '60s and '70s to create new dance music. The Blue Note label has supplied the most durable grooves for hip-hop, and this four-CD set shows why--presenting the original songs that provided the foundation to some well-known hits. The fusion of jazz improvisation, R&B backbeats, in-the-pocket basslines, and catchy electric piano-organ fills with moog-ARP synthesizer effects spiced, drum-machine beats, and altered pitch controls demolish the so-called musical generation gap. Guitarist Grant Green's Latin boogaloo "Sookie Sookie" was an Us3 favorite, and his anthem "Ain't It Funky Now" was kick-started as Public Enemy's "Gotta Do What I Gotta Do." Another swinging example of musical exchange is the low-rider lilt that East L.A.'s Kid Frost puts on bandleader Gerald Wilson's "Viva Tirado." Lou Donaldson's versions of "Who's Making Love" and the Isley Brothers' "It's Your Thing" get a gangster remake by the Nortorious B.I.G. and is bumrushed as the Brand Nubian's "Punks Jump Up To Get Beat Down." Bobbi Humphrey's conga-style intro on "Jasper Country Man" is given a Compton-style makevover by Ice-T on "New Jack Hustler." Organist Jimmy McGriff's Southern-fried shuffle "Blue Juice" gets an uptown subway from the duo Black Sheep, and the church chords of Lou Rawls's cover of the Motown chestut "You've Made Me So Very Happy" are let out of Sunday school by the hip, heathen pyschedelics of De La Soul's "I Am I Be." The real star of this collection is the pioneering trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Donald Byrd. His bass lines were simply unbeatable, which is the reason why his tunes "Beale Street" and "Dominoes" continue to bob heads today. Add Bobbi Humphrey, Bobby Hutcherson, and Cannonball Adderley, and you have a party for the ages. --Eugene Holley Jr.