It’s been about 60 years since the formation of the trailblazing funk-soul ensemble Dyke & the Blazers, with 2021 marking the 50-year anniversary of their unfortunate disbanding after only releasing one studio album. The good news is that the group recorded enough material for a Greatest Hits comp released before their disbanding, as well as an additional collection of songs, So Sharp!, released 15 years later.
Well, the hits keep coming. This Friday, Craft Recordings will be sharing a massive two-part, career-spanning release featuring 41 songs in total—including 16 previously unreleased tracks—broken up between 1966-1967 (Down on Funky Broadway: Phoenix) and the later years, 1968-1970 (I Got a Message: Hollywood). “The unique noise that Dyke and the players developed in the relatively isolated—musically speaking—desert environs of Phoenix, Arizona, was unaffected and real,” producer Alec Palao wrote in the albums’ notes. “It projected in sound the same sort of statement that their raw-voiced frontman, in his evocative description of the street and its importance to the Black community, was making. Dyke’s metaphor of Broadway, and its ‘dirty, filthy’ ennui, was entirely appropriate—this was dirty, filthy music, and soulful to its core.”
Ahead of the records’ release this Friday, we’re getting one last preview of the unheard music with “The Walk (Part One – East)” from the latter album, which echoes the upbeat funk of Greatest Hits’ “Funky Walk.” Hear that track below, and pre-order the records here.
