With powerhouse production trio Organized Noize, Sleepy Brown orchestrated Atlanta’s hallmark sound of the 90s; his slow-cooked southern-fried G-Funk providing hits for TLC, Outkast and Goodie Mob. However, by 1998 his desire was to take centre stage. The dizzying result was Sleepy’s Theme and their wonderful throwback LP, The Vinyl Room. Their vintage, 70s soul-steeped magnum opus was promptly passed on by Jimmy Iovine at Interscope, released only on CD on a limited scale, and mostly slept on. Blending organic instrumentation from one of the tightest, greasiest, yet sophisticated bands in the land, The Vinyl Room presented dreamy melodies, warm synth textures, stately horns and wayward beats. Brown conceived his “garage funk band” as adhering to the sonic touchstones of Blaxploitation and he achieved it. Featuring keyboardist/singer Eddie Stokes, drummer Victor Rico Cortez, guitarist Bill Odum, vocalist Keisha Jackson and the late Pimp C, the sound was always going to be in the pocket. While it eschewed contemporary trends, the underground sound was nevertheless fresh and grounded in the hat-tip spirit of hip-hop. With Sleepy bragging that there were no samples, The Vinyl Room comprised a richly textured, mesmerizing and confident sound where the recurring themes were women, cars and weed. As he explained, “the music of the 70s wasn’t computerized, it was just realness from the heart and that’s what we captured.” Indeed, Brown wasn’t just inspired by bygone funk; he grew-up in it. As a boy, he travelled to gigs with his music playing father and founder of the legendary Brick: Jimmy Brown. The album lopes at a weed-stoned pace, with sweet falsetto leads, spoken word raps and honey-coated female background vocals with just enough superfly sensibility to give you a contact high. The luscious bass grooves, silk-soft cymbal pats, raindrop-drowsy keyboards and country-fried wah-wah guitar licks conjure Bobby Womack in the lab with Marley Marl, Isaac Hayes laced by Dr. Dre or Curtis Mayfield bring introduced to DJ Quik. – Be With Records

Sleepy’s Theme | The Vinyl Room | double LP

Betty (Mabry) Davis, b1945, is an American funk and soul singer who grew up in North Carolina, spending time on her grandmother’s farm listening to B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, and Elmore James. At age 16 she left Pittsburgh for New York City, enrolling at the Fashion Institute of Technology while living with her aunt. She soaked up the Greenwich Village culture and folk music of the early 1960s. She associated herself with frequenters of the Cellar, a hip uptown club where young and stylish people congregated. It was a multiracial, artsy crowd of models, design students, actors, and singers. At the Cellar she played records and chatted people up. She also worked as a model, appearing in photo spreads in Seventeen, Ebony and Glamour. In her time in New York, she met several musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. Her first professional gig was not until she wrote “Uptown (to Harlem)” for the Chambers Brothers. Their 1967 album was a major success, but Betty was focusing on her modelling career. She was successful as a model but felt bored by the work. According to Oliver Wang’s They Say I’m Different liner notes, she said, “I didn’t like modelling because you didn’t need brains to do it. It’s only going to last as long as you look good.” As a model in 1966, Betty first met jazz musician Miles Davis who was 19 years her senior at a concert. Betty began dating Miles in early 1968, and were married in September 1968. In just one year of marriage, she influenced him greatly by introducing him to the fashions and the new popular music trends of the era. In his autobiography, Miles credited Betty with helping to plant the seeds of his future musical explorations by introducing the trumpeter to Jimi Hendrix and funk innovator Sly Stone. The Miles Davis album Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968) includes a song named after her and her photo on the front cover. In his autobiography, Miles said Betty was “too young and wild,” and accused her of having an affair with Jimi Hendrix which hastened the end of their marriage. Betty denied the affair stating, “I was so angry with Miles when he wrote that. It was disrespectful to Jimi and to me. Miles and I broke up because of his violent temper.” After accusing her of adultery, he filed for divorce in 1969. Miles said that the divorce was obtained on a “temperament” charge. He added, “I’m just not the kind of cat to be married.” Betty and Miles continued to see each other after their divorce. Hendrix and Miles remained close, planning to record, until Hendrix’s death. The influence of Hendrix and especially Sly Stone on Miles Davis was obvious on the album Bitches Brew (1970), which ushered in the era of jazz fusion. The origin of the album’s title is unknown, but some believe Miles was subtly paying tribute to Betty and her girlfriends. In fact, it is said that he originally wanted to call the album Witches Brew—it was Betty who convinced him to change it. In 2017, a documentary was released entitled Betty: They Say I’m Different. -edited from Wikipedia  link

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