Bohannon – Summertime Groove (1978)

Bohannon – Summertime Groove
Mercury SRM-1-3728| Released 1978 | Disco / Funk
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi |

A1 Let’s Start The Dance 5:30
A2 Listen To The Children Play 4:22
A3 Me And The Gang 5:16
A4 Let’s Start The Dance (Finals) 1:08
B1 I Wonder Why 3:18
B2 Summertime Groove 8:10
B3 The Street Dance 7:55

Manufactured By – Phonogram, Inc.
Record Company – PolyGram
Distributed By – PolyGram Distribution Inc.
Recorded at The Master Sound Studio, Atlanta, GA
Mixed at The Master Sound Studio and Studio One, Atlanta, GA
Mastered at  Masterdisk
Pressed by Sound Makers

Art Direction – AGI
Engineer – Joe Neil
Lead Vocals, Backing Vocals – Caroline Crawford
Mastered by G.K.
Photography by Gary Heery
Produced, arranged, directed , and written by Hamilton Bohannon

This album introduces Carolyn Crawford known as Caroline on lead and background vocals, except on ‘The Street Dance’, background vocals by Caroline and Sonia Rossman
This album is dedicated to all my Disco friends

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LINEAGE: Mercury SRM-1-3728 vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply; Creek Audio OBH-15; Audioquest King Cobra cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed with Click Repair on very light settings, manually auditioning the output; further clicks removed with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

I’m not going to say too much about this album because I wrote a butt-load on my last post and all I got in return was one snarky comment.  Immortalized by a chant in the middle of “Genius of Love” by the Tom Tom Club (right before James Brown is similarly honored), Bohannon was all about the infectious groove.  A one-time Motown arranger, Hamilton Bohannon was a Georgia native and this album was recorded in Atlanta. The record also “introduces” and extensively features vocalist Caroline Crawford, who also sang on Bohannon’s 1975 self-titled album on one track. The word “introducing” is written on back cover of the album but it’s misleading – Crawford had been singing for years and had singles out on Motown and Philly International before she began working with Bohannon.  But as a relative ‘unknown’ in an era of tremendous singers, Bohannon was actively trying to promote her and even produced her two albums on Mercury from this period.

Summertime Groove is his most famous record and deservedly recognized as a disco-funk classic.  I shared it with some people elsewhere recently and one person politely found it pleasant but a bit “same-y.” Different strokes etc etc, and “the disco beat” may be one of the most divisive elements in music history.  But I get comments to this effect a lot here when I post samba and other Afro-diaspora music. In many cases I think it has to do with a more collective approach to music making and listening where, like Prince said, there is joy in repetition, and where the audience (or dancers) are part of the music. One could also say Fela Kuti “gets a bit same-y” after a while. It’s the subtle shifts and variations between musicians who are in lockstep syncopation that keep it interesting, and its more about the kinetic movement of the ensemble than it is about the demonstration of individual soloists’ talents. So, a completely different aesthetic from, say, both most rock music, jazz, or things derived from the European symphonic tradition. People can either dig it or not dig it, or maybe they sort of dig it and then maybe in a few years they really dig it, or maybe they don’t forget all about it. It’s all okay by me.

I believe this record has been sampled to death, and C&C Music Factory just flat out stole Caroline Crawford’s “everybody dance now!” from ‘Let’s Start The Dance’ , giving it to Martha Wash.  Play it!

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