Sweetback! is back at the Monarch Tavern for 2012!
Friday, January 27, 2012
SWEETBACK! v.16 :
“Pinball Hustle”
Another evening of smokin’ hot rare disco, funk, space disco and dancefloor jazz rolls into the newly renovated Monarch Tavern. Never a cover and lots of room for dancing, booty shaking and cutting the rug.
This months Djs are:
David James – Founder of Toronto’s classic disco and disco/house soundsystem “Do you Remember disco?” and host of the “Moovin’ in the right direction” radio show on CIUT 89.5FM, featuring the hottest leftfield house, disco and disco edits in the City.
Uncle Funke – A selector extraordinaire with a touch like no other on the wheels of steel sure to motivate your feet across the dancefloor. This is the first time Uncle Funke has been at a Sweetback in over a year.
Jive Express – Armed with a vault of dangerous beats and dancefloor treasures Josh Laing (guitarist for the Chameleon Project) aka, the Jive Express continues to breath life into forgotten classics and disco monsters.
No Cover!
Come Early, Stay Late, Shake Your Booty, Don’t Hate.
Also – for your listening enjoyment, Jive Express recorded his set from last month’s Sweetback! and today, here on this site, we bring it to you. Through the power of Soundcloud, This heady mix of rare disco and funk is what you can expect at each and every Sweetback!
The return of Toronto’s baddest rare disco and funk night!
After a year long absence, the Sweetback! thumps it’s way into the newly renovated, Monarch Tavern for a free event! (no cover). We are on a mission to fill the air with lost classics, old favorites and dangerous dancefloor selections. We aim to put hustle in your bustle and bump in your grind as we fill the room with vibe. You bring your booty to the dancefloor and we got you covered at the door. It’s tight like that.
This edition of the Sweetback! the djs will include:
The Jive Express: Gutiarist for the Chameleon Project and collector of tracks so rare and lowdown even yo mama’s mama do know about them.
MJ Shaps: bassist and composer for King Sunshine and The Soul Motivators and disco selector extrodinaire!
DJ Voltaire Ramos: Guitarist for the Soul Motivators and esteemed Jazz/Funk enthusiast.
As science teaches us, all things in nature are subject to evolution. Is a song any different? From the time people stretched animal skins to beat with bones there has been a progression of sound. Each generation of a rhythm or melody building on what came before. Changing slightly, but usually revealing its genome in a trill, a texture, or a telling transcribing. Within every song, there is a lineage. The aboriginal peoples of Australia call them “Songlines” and if you follow them, they will often take you to new and interesting places.
The year is 1969 and a young up-and-comer in the record business is looking for new opportunities when the record label he works for folds. Now called Mustang and Bronco, the labels have hits like “I Fought The Law”, not to mention US and UK hits for one aritst directly under his management, Felice Taylor. With his career temporarily on hold, he agrees to write and produce a theme song for the Hanna-Barbera children’s TV series ‘The Banana Splits’. As is true to this day, music used in film or television can be very lucrative and the song “Doin’ The Banana Split” kept him in a positive cash flow for some time.
Prior to his work at Mustang/Bronco, he played drums and keys for an artist named Jackie Lee, touring on the strength of a song called “The Duck”. The two grew tight on that tour and when Jackie needed a new single he knew exactly who to call.
In 1970, Jackie Lee released the first ever recorded version of the classic “Your Sweetness Is My Weakness” written by none other than Mr. Barry White. That recording has never been re-released and can be found only on a 7″ vinyl single, played at 45 revolutions per minute. This version of the song was a Billboard “Soul Sauce” pick of the week in the October 10, 1970 issue along with the comment “Bound to be big”.
The name Jackie Lee was just a pseudonym conujured up by Earl Lee Nelson, whose wife’s name was Jackie. He also recorded under the names Earl Cosby, Chip Nelson and under the slightly more familiar moniker: Jay Dee. Jay Dee’s first album in 1974 called ‘Come On In Love’ was entirely produced by Barry White, and almost entirely written too. It included yet another recording of “Your Sweetness Is My Weakness”, this time with the songwriter himself at the helm to make it sound proper.
While producing the album for Jay Dee, Barry White’s solo career and his recordings with Love Unlimited were burning up the charts. His debut album ‘I’ve Got So Much To Give’ and its lead single “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More, Baby” went Gold. His recording of the instrumental “Love’s Theme” by Love Unlimited and re-released as The Love Unlimited Orchestra climbed to No. 1 on the USA charts and top 10 in twenty-five countries around the world. Barry White even married Glodean James of Love Unlimited, making 1974 a very big year for “The Man”.
Between 1973 and 1979, 20 albums were released on 20th Century records under the name Barry White, Love Unlimited or The Love Unlimited Orchestra, almost all of which achieved at least Gold status in the USA. He sold $16 million worth of records in just 1974 alone and Barry White was deemed responsible for the ‘Baby Boom’ in the mid-Seventies as reported by the New York Times. “Not me personally,” he would joke, “but my music.”
Barry White achieved a long list of classics, with songs such as “Love’s Theme”, “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Babe”, “Let The Music Play”, “What Am I Gonna Do With You”, and “It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me” becoming a virtual soundtrack to the 70s era.
In 1978 “The Man” would finally get his chance to record “Your Sweetness Is My Weakness” in what I suspect would be the way he first imagined it. With the release of the album “The Man”, a 12″ Disco single was distributed to DJs around the world featuring an epic 8-minute love-making eargasm of a song. As a single it climbed to #60 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending 9 weeks on the chart.
For your listening enjoyment, here are all three versions of my personal favourite Barry White lullabye. The ultra-rare Jackie Lee version (1970), the more widely distributed Jay Dee version (1974), and the eventual masterpiece by Barry White himself (1978).
The golden era of ‘60s and ‘70s soul music boasts a great tradition for Christmas songs and, following in the footsteps of classic Christmas albums from the Motown stable and James Brown, Strut enter the festive spirit this November with the first ever Yuletide compilation on the label, IN THE CHRISTMAS GROOVE, bringing together 12 rare soul, funk and blues cuts rediscovered from Christmases past. Featuring tracks often only ever released as obscure 45 B-sides, the compilation tracks one-off moments when the good groove met the jingle bells to devastating effect. Artists include bluesman Jimmy Reed, jamming hard on ‘Christmas Present Blues’ and Calypsonian Capt. Elmo McKenzie with a lilting Yuletide Caribbean ode on Barbados label Trex.
IN THE CHRISTMAS GROOVE was released on CD and digital on November 23rd and features an extensive booklet including original sleeve artwork and sleeve notes by James Maycock of Mojo magazine.
For more info and to send a free christmas track visit
This past weekend we had the honour of welcoming Mr. Scruff back to Toronto at the Wrongbar. He played a monumental 4-hour+ set of the funkiest original grooves and re-edits around. One favourite is the following, which I absolutely had to track down after hearing it that night.
It comes courtesy Leftside Wobble, who describes it as: “[My] first edit of 2010 and it’s a cut of what is probably my all time favourite Curtis Mayfield track – spliced and diced with love into a 15 minute disco monster.”
I don’t normally link-out to other pages, but I have to give this man his due. Hope you all enjoy!
Sweetback! returns to the Augusta House for the last of 2009!
Friday, November 20th, 2009
SWEETBACK! v.14
“Winter Fresh”
Welcome to the last Sweetback! event for 2009. And for this one, we’re pulling out all the stops.
Joining us this month is Toronto’s Turntable Titan: JASON PALMA!
A local institution in and of himself, JASON PALMA has been blessing Tdot dancefloors for decades. As one of the first architects of Toronto’s early Acid Jazz, Deep House and Funk scenes, his skill at mixing records that other DJs would deem ‘unmixable’ has placed him in constant demand over the course of his career. With his influential fingerprint on so many up and coming DJs, it’s no wonder he has also become one of our most beloved homegrown fixtures.
With Sweetback! residents: The Jive Express Platform Shag
$5 @ the door
Doors at 9:30pm
Augusta House
(152 Augusta Ave.)
There will not be a December Sweetback! so come spend our last of 2009 on November 20th. We will also be celebrating Platform Shag’s Dirty 30! A better excuse to party you will rarely find!
Thank you to all the smooth sailors that joined us on the Love Boat! Once again, Sweetback! returns to the Augusta House in September, and we’re welcoming you sweetback to school!
Friday, September 25th, 2009
SWEETBACK! v.12
This month we return to a full resident lineup featuring: The White Falcon The Jive Express
& Platform Shag
After a summer of fun playing various shows outside the Sweetback!, including Love Boat on Captain John’s, Sweetback! returns to the Augusta House to welcome you all back to school! Bring out your baddest disco duds and groove the night away with drink specials designed to initiate freshmen and satisfy seniors. See you on the dancefloor!
I know this is a long time in coming, but I found it very difficult to write an appropriate musical eulogy for the best friend disco ever had: Michael Jackson.
Right from the start, J5 singles smacked down dancefloors and burned up the charts. “I Want You Back” reached number one in January 1970, “ABC” shortly after. Those Motown years produced some monster tracks for disco including “Hum Along and Dance” which featured an 8 minute 11 second hardcore Norman Whitfield boogie and the refrain “Ain’t no words to this song …. you just dancin on and on …”.
That song was featured on the album “G.I.T.: Get It Together”, which transitioned each song seamlessly into the next, bringing the disco DJ experience to your livingroom. They continued recording disco jams like “Life Of The Party”, not released on any album and sold only 36,000 singles but one of the most underrated disco songs of the era and “Forever Came Today” a Diana Ross original reworked into a disco smash that claimed number one on the Billboard Hot Dance chart for three weeks in July ’75.
When The Jacksons left Motown for CBS they started by recording “Enjoy Yourself”, a favourite spin at Sweetback!, and followed it up with dancefloor classics “Blame It On The Boogie” and “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)”. But the Jacksons’ disco legacy was only a beginning for Michael.
During production of “The Wiz” where Michael Jackson starred as the scarecrow, the film’s score arranger Quincey Jones agreed to produce his new “little brother”‘s next solo album. What came out of this collaboration was… indescribable.
“Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”, “Rock With You”, “Workin’ Day and Night”, “Get On The Floor”, “Off the Wall” and “Burn This Disco Out” really did burn disco dancefloors out as the spins mounted up. To this day, any of these songs will fill a dancefloor with wallclingers of all ages. They are just THAT good.
From this point the disco sound was starting to give way to the 80s, but Michael Jackson still gave us plenty to dance about with the Thriller album’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”, “Billie Jean”, “Beat It”, “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” and a beat driven duet with Pop icon Paul McCartney that Sweetback! still employs regularly: “Say, Say, Say”.
There are so many cuts I could have picked for this goodbye, but there was always one I would come back to. No matter how deep into the crate I dug, my fingers kept lingering on the most popular Jackson 5 disco jam that appeared not only as a 7″ and 12″ single, but also on two albums. Long before Michael Jackson debuted the moonwalk on Motown 25 in 1983, he popularized another dance move during a Soul Train performance of this song in 1973.
I hope you’re in a better place now MJ, doing the robot on a cloud:
