As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the music of Blaxploitation is inextricable from the Blaxploitation film experience. The music defined the film movement as much as any of the fashion, dialogue, or the recurring visual or thematic motifs.
With his soundtrack and score of Ivan Dixon’s 1972 film, Trouble Man, Marvin Gaye delivered what some consider to be his finest album. Isaac Hayes earned an Oscar for his “Theme From ‘Shaft’” in 1972. James Brown delivered the imminently funky soundtrack for the Fred Williamson vehicle, Black Caesar, which is still sampled by hip-hop artists today.
When Michal Jai White, Byron Minns, and director Scott Sanders were putting together their new film, Black Dynamite, an homage to Black action films of the 1970s, they enlisted Adrian Younge to write the soundtrack. Adrian Younge follows in Blaxploitation’s unique, and proud cinematic tradition, of having a single artist craft the entire soundtrack. Younge wrote, composed, and performed every song on the album, with the exception of the final track, “Dynomite (Suckapunch Re-edit),” which features the loopy, Tom Jones-esque vocals of Sir Charles Hughes. Younge receives powerful assists from singers, such as Loren Oden and Toni Scruggs, and is backed up on several cuts by musicians like Jack Waterson on drums, and WORLD OF HURT regular C.E. Garcia on electric bass and electric guitar. (If you’re lucky, you may be able to find them on tour, performing live as the Black Dynamite Sound Orchestra.)
Much like the visuals and story elements of the film, Adrian Younge’s music for Black Dynamite straddles a line between humor and homage. The lyrics to a number of the songs provide a humorous, deadpan, point-by-point narrative of the films’ events. In this regard, the soundtrack reminds me of James Brown’s vocal work for Black Caesar, which often repeated what was occurring onscreen, like the captions in a Silver Age comic book. At other times, Younge’s lyrics can serve as a surrogate for the audience (Somebody broke into Jimmy’s pad/Are they still here?/Sucka could be anywhere in the song, “Jimmy’s Apartment”) or Black Dynamite’s conscience (I miss the best brother I ever had/Oh, now I’m back/So I’ve got to kill that jack, yeah in “Jimmy’s Dead”). Basically, the lyrics from any song with the word “Jimmy” in the title are guaranteed to deliver a chuckle or two. However, when you strip away the lyrics, as with the instrumental version of “Jimmy’s Dead,” you will find in the soundtrack to Black Dynamite, a beautiful, soulful body of work with a remarkable fidelity to the era it is intended to evoke.
Reading the liner notes, you discover that Younge’s attention to detail extended far beyond the songs themselves, but to how those songs were created and recorded. He used analog recording techniques, not digital, and to the extent possible, every piece of equipment used to record the album was created prior to 1979. The very fact that Younge includes liner notes beyond lyrics and a laundry list of thank-yous is another welcome throwback to the days of vinyl.
Black Dynamite co-writer, Byron Minns, also stars in the film as Black Dynamite’s confidante, “Bullhorn.” His voice is the first thing you hear, and he sets the tone for the rest of the album by hollering out to the listener: I wanna tell you a STOO-ry/’ Bout a friend I had/He’s a mean muthafucka/And he’s SUPERBAD. He delivers the line and the rest of a short verse about Black Dynamite in an uncanny Rudy Ray “Dolemite” Moore impression which segues seamlessly into the husky, soulful vocals of LaVan Davis, who contributes vocals on several other tracks as well. One of my favorite moments is when Davis climbs a register to deliver the line after, “Better watch them politicians/Trying to shrink y’all n***** dicks,” in a soaring falsetto. It’s funny, but it’s a natural vocal flourish that fits perfectly into the song. It also encapsulates the focus on humor, craft, and attention to detail that is a hallmark of every aspect of Black Dynamite.
Another aspect of the Black Dynamite soundtrack that I appreciate is that it’s not some crass commercial effort by some huge media conglomerate to load a soundtrack with their hot artists or justify the A&R costs of the new talent they’re developing under the heading “Songs From And Inspired By The Major Motion Picture [FILL IN THE BLANK]. What the hell is “inspired by?” Inspired by the desire for royalty checks? Inspired by a need to stay relevant before they kick you off the label? Most of the songs you find on today’s soundtracks aren’t even in the actual movie, unless you stay until the very end of they final credits or if you electronically filter out the background noise during some crowd scene, you MIGHT be able to hear a snippet from some Macy Gray tune.
The Black Dynamite soundtrack is available through Wax Poetic Records, and it’s not the sort of album you want to pop into your iPod while you’re running around doing errands. In the tradition of the soul albums that inspired it, it’s the kind of album that you want to put on your stereo and LISTEN to while you flip through the well-illustrated liner notes. The layered live instrumentation, with everything from Younge’s breathy, jazzy flutes to the mournful hum of the Hammond organ, bear repeated listenings and deserve your full attention. The highest praise I can offer for what Younge created is to sayI played it back to back with a best of Willie Hutch CD, and the transition from Hutch, who gave us the soundtrack to The Mack, to Younge, was flawless. It felt like I had dropped the needle on the second half of a double album featuring the best of ’70s soul.
To find out more, check out the Wax Poetics site, and for nice insight into the history of the album and Younge’s process, you might want to check out this mini-documentary about the Black Dynamite score. Like the album itself, it is well done, with great attention to detail, and I highly recommend it.
- JEP
Just search for “The Black Fist” or “C.E. Garcia” and it should pop right up.