FUNKY FRIDAY: Rhino's PHAT TRAX [1994,1997]

Promo items for Rhino's Phat Trax series include a 4-song vinyl 12"
and a fabric-covered 10-song CD sampler

From the inside cover of the promo CD sampler:

Rhino drops da bomb and unleashes PHAT TRAX: The Best Of Old School. This slammin' 50-track 5-volume set includes some of the phattest artists from the Old School such as George Clinton, Funkadelic, Fatback, Mass Production, One Way, and Faze-O. Phat Trax also features classic cuts by Otis & Carla, Lyn Collins, The JB's, and The Meters. Rhino's Phat bonus to you is the long and unedited versions of most of these tracks. 

Picking up where Rhino's In Yo' Face series left off - no, wait, scratch that - Phat Trax actually has some of the same funk already anthologized on In Yo' Face but makes every effort to include full-length album cuts and extended versions of songs while In Yo' Face often opted for radio friendly single versions. Each of the five volumes released in August 1994 features 10 tracks, with many of them making not just the R&B charts but also the Dance charts as well. Another differentiating aspect between the two series is Phat Trax is not chronological.

Phat Trax Vol. 1 gets things started off oh so right and tight with Funkadelic's fifteen-and-a-half-minute classic from 1979, "(Not Just) Knee Deep". Our favorite track on the album is Tom Browne's jazz-funk landmark "Funkin' For Jamaica" from 1980, featuring vocals from Toni Smith. We also enjoy "Peanut Butter" by Twennynine feat. Lenny White.

Phat Trax Vol. 2 kicks off with another Funkadelic smash: the almost eleven-minute extended version of "One Nation Under A Groove" from 1978. Together with the second track, the sub-bass workout by Fatback known as "Backstrokin'", Vol. 2 gets off on-the-good-foot although most of the rest of the tracks are too funky for our taste. The album reaches back to 1969 for some timeless funk from New Orleans' finest, The Meters, with "Cissy Strut" to close the album out.

We are fans of no less than six tracks on Phat Trax Vol. 3: One Way's "Cutie Pie"; The System's "You Are In My System"; (Calvin) Yarbrough & (Alisha) Peoples and their hypnotic plea "Don't Stop The Music"; The Time's epic "777-9311"; Jesse Johnson's extended non-album B-side to "Can You Help Me", "Free World" and finally George Clinton's Special Atomic Mix of "Atomic Dog" that runs just under ten minutes. Once again, the disc's final track is from the Sixties, a classic duet between Otis Redding and Carla Thomas known as "Tramp".

The high points for us on Phat Trax Vol. 4 are Carl Carlton's wonderfully titled "She's A Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked)" and the Brit funk of Junior's "Mama Used To Say". The Bomb Squad sampled the opening horn squeal from "The Grunt" for use in Public Enemy's "Rebel Without A Pause". Actually, keen-eared hip-hop heads can spot many samples used in their favorite songs on both this collection and the In Yo' Face series that preceded it. Case in point is this album's final track, "Think (About It)" by The Female Preacher, Lyn Collins. According to the fine folks at whosampled.com, nearly 4,000 songs have sampled the James Brown-written hit from 1972. Think about that.

Like several other volumes in the Phat Trax series, Phat Trax Vol. 5 starts off top-heavy, with the album's longest song being the first one in the track listing. In this case, it is the over 13-minute-long Disco Version of The Gap Band's "You Dropped A Bomb On Me" complete with air sirens. The funk keeps on coming with the disc's second track, an extended mix of Heatwave's "The Groove Line". Those two workouts are followed in quick succession by Cheryl Lynn's "Got To Be Real" and The Emotions' "Best Of My Love", and before you know it, you've been shakin' your groove thang for a full half hour after just the first four songs. Two more of our favorites on this disc are G.Q.'s funky smooth "Disco Nights (Rock Freak)" and Foxy's roller-skating jam "Get Off". Song for song, it's a dead heat for us between Vol. 3 and Vol. 5 as to which disc is our favorite in the series.

Now, if you've read this far and are looking at the copies of the Phat Trax discs in your collection, scratching your head because they don't look the same as the ones featured above, you're absolutely right. In 1997, Rhino revisited the Phat Trax series, introducing all-new artwork for the first five volumes and adding an additional two volumes to the collection. The track lists for each of those first five volumes remain the same. Before we review the two new volumes in the series, here's the very colorful, updated 1997 artwork that graces the covers of Volumes 1-5 that you may have in your collection:

The songs on Phat Trax Vol. 6 didn't appeal to us beyond a few tracks we already owned on other albums, so we didn't buy it. (Take that, obsessive compulsion!) On the plus side, the disc has 12 songs instead of the 10 tracks each the previous five volumes have. Are there any songs on this disc that rock your world? We like George Duke's "Dukey Stick" and the seminal go-go classic "Bustin' Loose" from Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers.

Phat Trax Vol. 7 closes out the series on a high note with no less than four dance floor favorites we wholeheartedly approve of among its eleven tracks. The second song on the album is the ten-minute-plus Special Disco Version of McFadden & Whitehead's positivity anthem "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" and it's followed by Brick's "Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody", memorably sampled in a song of the same title by Kid N Play. One man studio band Peter Brown is up next with the nine-minute burning question "Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me?" followed by the magnificent nine and a half minute journey to "Boogie Wonderland" with Earth, Wind & Fire and The Emotions.