I’ve always regarded jazz-funk as the devil’s music, something for which I primrily blame George Benson’s scat singing along to his guitar. And Level 42, obviously.

Yet I heard this on the car radio a couple of days ago and was so entranced by its groove that when I got to where I was going (home), I decided to Shazam it to find out who it was by.

Curiously, Shazam came up with a completely different song (damn those algorithms!) but I knew it was wrong because I knew the title from Johnnie Taylor’s original, so I sat and waited until it was over. Which may have worried the neighbours as it’s nearly seven minutes long.

As mentioned, I know the 1968 original by Johnnie Taylor and that’s a classic, featuring the in-house Stax band of Isaac Hayes and Booker T & the MGs. This cover was recorded less than a year later.

It seems that Mr Donaldson is an alto saxophonist of the jazz persuasion and this song featured on his not-very-well-regarded 1969 album Hot Dog for the esteemed Blue Note label.

The Allmusic review – obviously written by a jazzer – is splendidly snooty, especially about this song, sneering that “it has an out-of-tune group vocal that fails to be charming in its amateurishness.”

On that we will have to disagree because I love it, even though (and possibly even because) it does that jazz thing of giving each band member a moment to do his thing on his own while the band grooves along behind him.

That band consists of breakbeat legend Leo Morris (later Muhammad) on drums, guitarist Melvin Sparks, Charles Earland on the cheesy-but-great Hammond organ and trumpeter Ed Williams.

The album has a splendid cover photo too, as you can see here. And in its fusion of jazz and funk it is indisputably jazz-funk. So perhaps I do like it after all.