Tadeusz Nalepa - Bluesbreakout 1971-1972 (1991)

Somebody once famously stated that: 'If it ain't Mississippi, if it ain't raining and if you ain't sitting on the corner of the street soaking wet, hoping you weren't hungry - it ain't the blues'.
Well I always thought that was true... Until last week, when my good friend proved me wrong by showing me a fantastic album - 'Bluesbreakout' by Tadeusz Nalepa's 'Breakout' band.

Believed it or not, but Tadeusz Nalepa is white, he doesn't come from Mississippi (but from Rzeszów, Poland) and he sure can play the blues! I was really surprised that such fantastic blues music can come from behind the iron curtain.

The album was released in 1991 as a compilation of two of the groups' previous titles - 'Blues' and 'Karate' (1971 and 1972 respectively). The music therefore was recorded in times of deep communism in Poland - when artists where banned from public performances if their hair was too long and when the state treated the Beatles as a symbol of western, imperialistic society's moral decay.

Bearing that in mind, I think the authentic feeling of the music and its uncanny resemblance to American blues is mind-boggling - Western records were really hard to come by at that time. Still, you can hear many influences in Breakout's playing - there's a bit of Clapton, a bit of Robert Johnson a bit of John Mayall etc.etc.

You ask: how come? Well, Nalepa recalls touring Western Europe with his previous band - Blackout - and meeting Eric Burdon, who gave him his guitar and a bunch of tapes with 'black blues music' - Nalepa immediately fell in love with it. Actually, the couple of months of concerts they performed in Holland at that time allowed them to buy some proper equipment - before, they used to manually convert acoustic guitars into electric ones, simply because the latter weren't readily available in the *ekhm* People's Republic of Poland. The Western equipment is the reason why the album sounds a lot better than most other Polish music at that time.

The lyrics sung by Nalepa are in no way worse than the music of Breakout. The person responsible for these great texts is the poet Bogdan Loebl who also used to live in Rzeszów at that time. While the music is clearly inspired by American standards, the lyrics have a unique quality - deep, moving, yet very simple.

So, it turns out you don't have to be a black farmer working in the cotton fields of deep Mississippi to feel the blues. As Howlin' Wolf once said: "When you ain't got no money and can't pay your house rent and can't buy you no food, you damn sure got the blues".

This quote frightingly accurately describes communist Poland... 

...Nalepa just found his Mississipi in Rzeszów.

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Curtis Mayfield - Superfly OST (1972)

This soundtrack to the blaxploitation film by the same name could may well be the soundtrack to a whole decade - the 70s. And who could capture this distinct sound better than Curtis Mayfield? A legend, a pioneer, a ghetto poet - a genius!

Superfly, the film, (directed by Gordon Parks Jr. - the man who brought us Shaft) tells the story of a black drug dealer from Harlem, New York, who goes by the name of 'Youngblood Priest'. Said pusher, tired with the life he lives, decides to quit his successful career and so convinces his partner - Eddie - to organise one last score, earn a lot of dollah and get out of the business. Priest's story serves as a base for depicting, as it usually is with the blaxploitation genre, the gang-ridden streets of the ghetto with its corrupt cops, dodgy pimps, dirty hookers and desperate junkies.

Curtis' soundtrack does pretty much the same thing. He has already been known for his well crafted music with forcible and expressive lyrics from the time he performed with The Impressions quartet during the 60s. The Superfly OST was his third solo release, however, and it didn't show any signs of him losing it!

The album is a soul & funk masterpiece! A mixture of the trademark wah-wah guitar, deep, funky basslines, groovy keys, vivid percussions and a stinging horn section - all topped up with Mayfield's laid-back falsetto. Hell, you even get the odd strings every now and then giving it a disco-ish feeling. The music, however, only serves as a background to Curtis' incisive social commentary of black urban life in the 70s.

Besides the overall damning attitude, the lyrics just sound great and fantastically complement the music:

I'm your mamma, i'm your daddy

I'm that nigga in the alley

I'm your doctor, when in need

Want some coke, have some weed

You know me, i'm your friend

Your main boy, thick and thin

I'm your pusherman

I'm your pusherman

Ain't i clean, bad machine

Super cool, super mean

Feelin' good, for the man

Superfly, here i stand

Secret stash, heavy bread

Baddest bitches, in the bed

I think you can clearly see that Curtis Mayfield inspired and anticipated the whole rap/hip-hop vibe (with it's 'thug life' stories). Well it's no surprise then, that his tracks have been sampled by such great hip-hop artists as:
Pete Rock, Gang Starr, Biggie Smalls, Beastie Boys, Master P, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Ice-T etc. etc.


I strongly recommend watching the film to get the feeling of the music and the times. But for now, just check this out (definitely watch the first vid - it's an actual excerpt from the film):

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