To be honest they were not quite the cutting edge of Funk and more in tune with the 60s big band Soul outfits, though reviewing them in 2016, the classification doesn’t seem to matter much. This one-two punch was leavened by tracks that picked up on their Soul background such as “Skating On Thin Ice” and the more Blues-themed “Flash In The Pan”. managed to mark out some space of their own there with hot and heavy tracks like “You Got To Funkifize” (though I have no idea what that means) and “You Strike My Main Nerve” competing with slick love songs like the Jazz-inflected “Gone” and “You’re Still A Young Man” (which was their first big hit and also one of their most enduring songs). Though there were a host of bands working in a similar field at the time as Funk exploded across the USA, T.O.P. It was with their second LP “Bump City” that Tower Of Power really came into their own (Rick Stevens replacing Rufus Miller as vocalist for this one, he sported a good James Brown style holler, but even so, he didn’t last long!) and started to see themselves becoming a fixture on the R n B and Billboard charts in the United States. Put that all together and you had a tempting recipe which paid off well for the T.O.P.
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Added to that they wore their own R n B roots with pride, plus were more than capable of knocking out some smooth floating Jazz/Soul ballads. The influence of James Brown and the JBs is evident in the work of the Tower Of Power and for their two most successful albums which are featured here they employed the kind of tough Funk workouts that Brown had pioneered in the late 60s. They are probably the only people who recorded with the Monkees, the Grateful Dead and KMFMD (though I will be happy to be proved wrong on this point). Though the band (who are still very much in existence and playing live today) would have many line up changes over the years they would always be marked out by their distinctive and large brass section which was called into perk up the works of many other artists over the years. So was formed a long, long working relationship with much success into the bargain too. The Tower Of Power officially came into being when band founders Emilio Castillo and Stephen Kupka, both saxophonists, were urged to join forces by Emilio’s father, who could see the natural spark the two had.