"The Streetbeater (Sanford and Son Theme)" by Quincy Jones (from the album You've Got It Bad, Girl, 1973)
This track brings me as much pure visceral joy as a song not performed by Louis Armstrong is capable of. The pulse of the tune struts with attitude. It's an instrumental that offers a complex, layered melange of textures (harmonica, saxes, bottom-heavy bass). It's got the greasiest greasy Hammond organ sound this side of Charles Earland. It's got a boss cowbell part even!
This tune makes you want to dance. It is inextricably attached, for me, to the image of Fred and Lamont pulling up in the driveway, in that ol' streetbeatin' pick-up truck--a vision I saw so many late-nights, when I was an insomniac teenager addicted to the UHF channels on my black-and-white TV.
If you don't dig this one, I got just one thing to say, in the best Redd Foxx spirit: "You just a big ol' reg-uh-ler dummy, dummy!"
[Cue audience laughter and applause.]
No comments:
Post a Comment