Detroit has provided an incredible wealth of black dance music to the world. We've posted a number of tracks from Motor City here on Beat Electric, here is yet another to attempt to chip away at the endless musical output of this city. Cookie Do is a one-off artist as far as I know with production from Danny Omar, who also worked with Detroit super group The Spinners and has guitar, songwriting, and special thank you credit on some of their late '70s to '80s LPs. Dream Girl features somewhat cheesy rap style vocals on the A-side, the instrumental is my favorite mix and really delivers the goods with a loose minimal funk groove over a basic shuffling drum machine pattern.

  Cookie Do - Dream Girl (inst)

  I just got back from a couple weeks out of town and managed to scrape a few cool eighties funk records from some bible belt shops. First up is a Macola-distributed 12" by Kristie, a glossy '85 indie production. Macola-related funk records have a similar disjointed later 80s sound that I can't get enough of.

  Our own Cosmic Champaign is known for spinning Fine Quality's "Aah Dance" in his sets lately. I was stoked to find the generic looking LP including that track along with some other solid cuts from the studio crew behind Sugarhill. "Saturday Night" is one of the better cuts from the LP, written and produced by Bunny Sigler.

  Finally, Osborne & Giles were a short lived duo featuring Billy Osborne from L.T.D. and Attala Giles from Deco. I'm really only feeling this one cut from the LP but it is definitely worth sharing.

Kristie - Head Games

New Guys On The Block - Saturday Night

Osborne & Giles - I Can't Stop This Feeling

Here is a laid back 1984 track with some deep production from Buddy Turner. Buddy worked on a lot of tracks on Philly World Records including Q's masterpiece The Voice of Q. Pamela Joy's sole release is a great example of the classy sparse '84 funk sound with especially great synth stabs that will keep haunting you long after your first listen.

Pamela Joy - Think Fast

Pamela Joy - Think Fast (instrumental)

Here are a couple of cool cuts from 1984. 1984 was an interesting year for music. The boogie greatness of 1982 was fizzling out, electro was king, and house was just getting started. These tracks highlight where genres converged and coalesced into some strange hybrids.

This first track by Zero Hour shows a lot of electro influence and can easily pass as a theme song for the oft overlooked comedy masterpiece Fletch Lives. Seems like it could have been produced by Herbie Hancock or Jan Hammer with a little help from Egyptian Lover.

The next track by Leon Love is an odd bird produced by proto house legend Patrick Adams with Ron Mindseed. It sounds a bit like electro coming dangerously close to Hi-NRG territory. Almost too close; but us in the Bay Area have a very low threshold for it.

Zero Hour - The Dark Side (Dub)
Leon Love - Once Is Enough (Dub)

Master Funk Records was an '80s UK dance label founded by electro producer Tony Williams (not to be confused with the American jazz drummer who worked with Miles Davis). This 12" was one of the label's later releases from 1984. Both sides are great, I might actually prefer the B-side which sounds starts off sounding like a Sade instrumental until the deep bass line comes in. For more on Tony Williams check out this interview by Greg Wilson on the excellent Electro Funk Roots website.


Scratch - Keep On Searching For Love
Scratch - Eastern Lady