BOBBY WOMACK - PART 1

Okay, I'm going to level with you now.... I am very, very white. Literally, figuratively. Inside, out. Up, down & around. I can't dance. Can't jump. My crib is unpimped ('70s suburbia split-level; straight "Brady Bunch"). My fingers & grill are blingless. My rims are factory-issue. My coiff is more congressional comb-over than Superfly 'fro or cornrow.

Sadly, my skin is the color of a Croatian cadaver. A Scandinavian vampire. An albino agoraphobic. Which is to say: It's pale, baby. Pale as a potato's pith; a drinker's piss; an Irishman's ass. (Have I mentioned that I'm half Irish? And very, very pale?)

There is also the fact that I reside in the"whitest" city in these united states of America, located a mere two miles from the second "blackest" city in these united states of America. While EMINEM made his bones amongst 8 Mile's strip joints & storefront Methodists & Baptists, I willingly gave in to inertia amidst 6 Mile's strip malls and set-back Presbyterians & Catholics. Mere miles apart... yet Mr. Mathers' Devil's Nights were likely spent watching abandoned buildings burn to the turf, while mine were occupied with egging '70s split-levels and toilet-papering unsuspecting evergreens. Represent!

So, you see, what I'm trying to say is... I am decidedly unfunky. I lack soul (literally, figuratively). I have no rhythm. And even my blues are of the pale, powdered, suburban variety. Hell, I needed a fellow honky like Eminem to slip me a glimpse of African-American musical culture. Quentin Tarantino, as it turns out, too.

While, over the years, I've come to regard "Pulp Fiction" as ferociously overrated, I've remained a fan of its oft-forgotten follow-up, "Jackie Brown." It was the soundtrack to that latter film that introduced me to BOBBY WOMACK, a man with rampant rhythm, an abundance of funk, and some serious soul.

Well... last week, PITCHFORK trumpeted the news that a new compilation -- THE BEST OF BOBBY WOMACK: THE SOUL YEARS -- will be released this Tuesday (along with digital editions of the man's albums, spanning 1968 to 1976). Say no more. Time to get my groove on. Or, at least, as much groove as a half-Irish vampire cadaver can manage....

[MP3] "Across 110th Street" [1972]

[MP3] "California Dreamin'" [1969]

[MP3] "Harry Hippie" [1972]

[MP3] "Lookin' for a Love" [1974]

[MP3] "I Can't Take It Like a Man" [1970]

[MP3] "Fly Me to the Moon" [1969]