A special look at the career of FRED WESLEY, on the eve of his Australian tour. Due to how incredibly extensive Wesley’s discography is, I’ve decided to focus this mix more on his various guest appearances on other people albums, rather than his time with James Brown, The JB’s, and Parliament (Which really could have taken up the entire radio show on their own). While Wesley definately has a signiture and unmistakable sound, I hope that with this mix, you can get a sense of just how diverse his range actually was. You might be hard pressed to hear that infamous trombone on some of these songs, as it is quite often not a dominant instrument for many of these tracks, but that really stands as a testament to how talented he was an arranger and producer for many of these albums. Finally, this mix really only scratches the surface of the extensive career of Wesley. There are still so many albums that should have made it into this mix, but due to the radio shows time restaint I obviously couldn’t fit anymore into the mix. So I hope you enjoy this taste of who I consider one of the funkiest musicians on the planet, and I hope to see you at one of the live shows this weekend (While the Sunday night performance is sold out, a second monday night performance has just been announced at the Basement, with yours truly doing DJ support for both nights).

• Fred Wesley - Damn Right I Am Somebody (People)
• Freak Power - Freakin’ (Acid Jazz)
• Vernon Burch - Baby Love (Chocolate City)
• Johnnie Taylor - Love Is Better In The AM (Columbia)
• Gwen McCrae - Hey World (Atlantic)
• Lenny Williams - Changing (Rocshire)
• TTF - Astro Boogie (RSO)
• New Birth - Hit Record (Ariola)
• Hank Crawford - Funky Pigeon (Kudu)
• Preceptions feat Fred Wesley - Snake Hips Johnson (Freestyle)
• Bootsy Collins - Another Point Of View (Warner)
• Dazz Band - Party Right Here (Motown)
• Earth Wind & Fire - Let Me Talk (CBS)
• Parlet - Funk Until The Edge Of Time (Casablanca)
• Sweat Band - Hyper Space (Uncle Jam)
• Godmoma - Godmoma Here (Elektra)
• Bohannon - Take The Country To New York City (Phase II)
• Terry Callier - Sign Of The Times (Elektra)
• David Matthews with Whirlwind - California Dreaming (Kudu)
• Idris Muhammad - Hard To Face The Music (Kudu)
• Curtis Mayfield - You Better Stop (RSO)
• Fred Wesley & The JB’s - Blow Your Head [Dub Version] (Urban)

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