The Parliaments – Time

The Parliaments

“Listen – The Parliaments – Time – MP3″

Greetings all.

Greetings all.
I hope everyone has had an excellent week, and that you’re all ready to take a step into the weekend with a taste of classic soul.
While I’d venture a guess that most folks are familiar with the name Parliament – as the P in P-Funk – many of you may not be as familiar with the early days of Mr. Clinton and his friends, when they straddled the landscape of Detroit soul, be-conked and harmonized, as the Parliaments.
If you are familiar with that group, it’s probably via their best known record ‘(I Wanna) Testify’, which was covered numerous times (including a P-Funk remake) and is rightly remembered as a soul classic.
In the years before Funkadelic came together, the Parliaments recorded a number of uniformly excellent soul 45s for the Golden World, Revilot and Atco labels. If you’re not wise to these sounds, you can grab most of the 45s without dropping too much cash*, or you can pick up any of a number of reissues that gather this material.
Though some of the Parliaments cuts lean in the direction of the rougher sound of ‘Testify’ (they had a tendency to back a harder, more innovative tune with a more classic soul sound, i.e. ‘Testify’s flip ‘I Can Feel the Ice Melting’), the group’s brief discography includes a couple of outstanding bits of sweet, danceable soul. ‘Time’ is one of those records. As is the case with all of their sides, the song has a memorable melody, outstanding vocals (I think George Clinton is the lead on this one) and a very solid Motor City arrangement. I really dig the opening horns, as well as the rhythm guitar and drums in tandem running through the verse.
If you listen closely at the end of the record, there’s a bit of what sounds like extraneous studio dialogue.
It’s a very groovy side, and I hope you dig it.
Have a great weekend and I’ll see you all on Monday with a new edition of Funky16Corners Radio.

Peace

Larry

*With the exception of their Golden World 45 ‘Heart Trouble’ which will run you a few hundred dollars

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