Legendary organist Reuben Wilson has made a comeback, first as a favourite sample for hip-hoppers, and now as part of a jazz/soul/funk outfit called the Masters of Groove, writes Jim Carroll
Enforcers of the Trade Descriptions Act can stand down because rarely have a group come along who are better named. The Masters of Groove are jazz-soul-funk superheroes sent on a mission to rescue the world from whiskery acid jazzers and flatulent funkateers in Afro wigs. A six-handed groove machine who combine all the licks, experience and jams required to make you realise just how exciting soul-jazz can be, the Masters will see you now.
Keep a close eye on Reuben Wilson's fingers as he makes that organ shuffle. Guitarist Grant Green Jr (pictured left) may have taken his guitarplaying pedigree from Green Sr, and drummer Bernard "Prett" Purdie may have played on over 3,000 albums, taking in everything from Aretha Franklin's Rocksteady to James Brown's Cold Sweat. But it's Wilson and his Hammond B3 who's the star of this show.
A player whose work proved irresistible in later years to many hip-hop acts when it came to liberating a sample to funk up their own releases, the ex-professional boxer's cuts for Blue Note, Cadet and Chess saw him splitting the jazz atom by introducing a little pop sensibility to the game. Whether working with such fellow greats as Lee Morgan, Idris Muhammad and Grant Green or cutting a fat chunk of funk like Got to Get Your Own, Wilson always possessed a mesmerising, unmistakeable swing in his playing. Here was a true maestro at work.
As with many others who toiled in the soul-jazz boiler-room in the late 1960s, it took the rise of acid jazz and a rash of samples 20 years later for Wilson to get a sizeable paycheque. Got to Get Your Own began to turn heads and legs when it was dug out of the crates by DJs such as Paul Murphy, Gilles Peterson and Eddie Pillar. New audiences could appreciate what Wilson set out to do with those five albums for Blue Note back in the day.
"At Blue Note, we were free to play pretty much what we wanted to because the label was all about finding something fresh", remembers Wilson. "They accepted what you were going to do and they didn't dictate anything. I think the only dictation I got from them was they didn't really want me to record any blues, but that was alright with me because I had another thing in mind anyway. I wanted to take straight-ahead jazz and mix it with pop.
"It was a new concept because I was doing it with an all-jazz band. I thought it would be interesting to have the drummer play funk beats and then play jazz-type licks over the top of it. That's acid jazz, and when the audience starts bouncing their heads, you know you're doing it right."
Yet organ-led combos and soul-jazz records had a very small window of opportunity before the arrival of the synthesizer. With no one keen on hearing him play the organ or even paying him to do so, Wilson found himself doing pop and disco with the Fatback Band until the acid-jazz bandwagon rolled into town. Suddenly, Wilson began hearing that his old records were blowing up all over the place. Sampled by Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Us3 and Guru, Wilson was thankful that these cats were ignoring his advice to get their own.
"Sampling was a big thing for me because it brought new interest and a new audience for me," he says. "I don't think people knew so much about the original artists such as myself who were on those records, but it did kind of put the name back out there at the time for people who knew about it in the past."
A worldwide tour in 1995 as part of Guru's all-star Jazzmatazz ensemble showed him that there was an audience keen on hearing him. After collaborating with Lonnie Smith and seeing a clatter of Blue Note reissues and compilations hit the shelves, Wilson joined forces with Purdie and Green Jr to set the Masters of Groove extravaganza in motion. A couple of releases and a lot of touring followed, making Wilson a happy man today as he plays to an audience he regards as "the children of my original audience".
As someone who has seen good days and bad nights as a jazzman, Wilson feels jazz's good times may be behind it. "Honestly, I do think jazz was much bigger a very long time ago, probably back in the 1940s or 1950s. There may be more jazz players today, but there are less places to work. But it goes in spurts; it grows and then seems to drop out.
"What will happen is new forms of music may grow, like acid jazz. It definitely seems to be growing pretty strong right now outside of the United States because you find more openness there to different kinds of music.
"It's not a competitive thing, so you'll hear jazz and rock 'n' roll all at the same place. That's probably where the future for jazz lies."
• Masters of Groove play Crawdaddy, Dublin on Monday, August 2nd
