24 Carat Black – 24 Carat Black (Theme) (1973)

I was originally planning to use today’s blog post to make some important points about the merits of vinyl versus CDs and the unintended impacts of the different mediums on the lengths of LPs over the years …. maybe tomorrow!

However, lost for inspiration as to what to post next, I decided to start working my way through my collection of seven inch singles (my favourite musical medium) to select a song to post this evening. The number of 7″ singles that I own has been growing steadily but not exponentially. In order for a single to join my collection, the song has to be good enough for me to be prepared to add it to the pantheon of the bestmusicofalltime …. If I listen to one of my singles and find that it doesn’t meet this criterion, then it is despatched rapidly to the Oxfam shop.

Putting this theory to the test right now, I pulled out 24 Carat Black‘s magnificent self titled, “theme” song.

Now the band only ever produced one LP but they have been heavily sampled over the years by Eric B, Dr Dre, Jay-Z, Digable Planets, Naughty By Nature, Pusha-T and Kendrick Lamar amongst others.

So, what is ironic about this tune is that it doesn’t so much “sample”, but rather “steal wholesale” the bassline from Can‘s astounding “Vitamin C” which was released in 1972 on their Ege Bamyasi LP. As regular followers will know, that Can tune features possibly the finest drumming in the history of popular music as this previous post will confirm!

Anyhow, 24 Carat Black have cooked up a terrific piece of early 1970s funk and this single will be staying with me.

Play loud!