We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago……
If you had your transistor radio on in late 1971…you might have heard a sound that was otherworldly in its funkiness. The song was Outa-Space from Billy Preston. My god, was it groovy , and I immediately headed to Bob’s Musical Isle…stuck my 50 cents into the vending machine and out popped 4 minutes of greatness.
It came from his debut album “I Wrote A Simple Song” and was actually the flip side of the title track on 45 but DJ’s preferred the instrumental and played it instead…back when instrumentals could become hits on the radio.
The killer sound came from Preston playing his clavinet through a wah-wah peddle and he and the band (including George Harrison on guitar) did it in one take. Why was George Harrison playing on the record?
Well, Beatle fans know that Preston became the unofficial “5th Beatle” late in the bands run and contributed his keyboard wizardry to the White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be…
Particularly on “Get Back”…
Here is what I believe is the greatest instrumental of all-time (alright, Frankenstein might get some votes). Put it on right now…I guarantee a smile!
The rest of the LP ranges from the funkiness of ‘Should Have Known Better” and “You Done Got Older”…to the Ray Charles like soul of “Without A Song”…to the simplicity of the title track. And then there was the gospel flavor that was always a part of Preston’s recorded output. Like Charles and others before him, he takes you to church with “Swing Low Sweet Chariot, “God Is Great” and “My Country Tis Of Thee”, the latter of which was a risk in the same year that we got “Whats Goin On” from Marvin Gaye. He does get topical with “The Bus” showing that social issues were not going to be ignored.
It’s a strong debut from a young but veteran player that would have been solid even without That Song….but Outa-Space took it into hyper-drive. Get Down…Get Funky…Get Happy!
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