The Kay-Gees – Get Down

7th October 2021 · 1970s, 1974, Funk, Music

Here’s another infectious party in your ears. There’s not much to it but there doesn’t need to be, beyond that fat beat, the funky bass, the jagged guitars and the constant exhortations to Get Down. Apart from that soaring soprano sax that keeps on taking it higher.

Not that those encouragements are needed, because your feet will be twitching the moment it begins, your shoulders will start shaking and before long, the joint will be jumping. Or, as the song says, this funky groove will make you move, and everybody will get down to the funky sound.

Formed in Jersey City, NJ, The Kay-Gees boasted fine funk connections through their guitarist Kevin Ball (later to become Amir Bayyan), who had two siblings in their more successful soundalikes Kool & The Gang.

Little surprise then, that they should share the same hard, tight style, with valuable mentors in big brothers Robert and Ronald (Khalis Bayyan), who was happy to serve as producer, arranger, and sometimes songwriter for his younger brother.

The band (Kevin Ball on guitar, Michael Cheek on bass, Callie Cheek on drums, Peter Duarte on sax, Ray Wright on brass, Dennis White on woodwind, Kevin Lassiter on keyboards and percussionist Wilson Beckett) was signed to Kool & The Gang’s own imprint.

Ronald wrote most of the material for their 1974 debut album, Keep On Bumpin’ & Masterplan and its sequel, Burn Me Up, but withdrew from centre stage as they moved towards disco with their last two albums, Find A Friend and Kilowatt, before disbanding in 1978.

This is surely the finest of a band that burned briefly in the mid-Seventies, though their earlier tune Who’s The Man (With The Master Plan) was famously sampled by Dr. Dre on his landmark debut The Chronic, while Kanye sampled another tune, Heavenly Dream, for his second album Late Registration.

The only thing wrong with it is the abrupt fade at the end. I’ve searched high and low for an extended version, because there surely has to be one out there somehwhere. But in vain.