VA - Jumpin' - Classics From The Original Disco Underground Vol. 1 & 2 (1997-1998)

Youngsters and those who are otherwise late to the party will be confounded at their elders' indifference toward this collection of rare classics from the late disco and boogie boom of the late '70s and early '80s. Unlike their watered-down and novelty-value platinum counterparts, none of these songs exactly troubled the charts upon release and none of them are played at sporting events. Regardless of any of the attendant snobbishness that comes along with a compilation like Jumpin', it is a fine grouping of sounds that emanated from New York clubs like the Loft and the Paradise Garage over 20 years prior to this release. If you're a vinyl purist, it could take you a fair amount of time at a princely sum to hunter-gather these 12 nuggets -- or you could just plunk down the cost of this one disc and be done with it. Five reasons for picking this up: the lush, Latin jazz-funk of Candido's "Thousand Finger Man"; the dizzying bliss of Cloud One's "Disco Juice" (surprisingly not in its superior nine-minute incarnation); the delightfully oddball roller-funk of T.W. Funkmasters' "Love Money"; the exuberant mid-tempo shake of Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face?"; and the dub-drenched Latin funk of Dinosaur L's "Go Bang." Acting primarily as a great introduction to the underground dancefloor favorites of yesteryear, the disc also functions as a skip down memory lane for former club-goers. Furthermore, many of these songs rightfully live on in the crates of house and disco DJs of the present.

The Harmless label issued the sequel to Jumpin' in 1998, a year after its predecessor, and it's almost as solid, running through the club classics of the late '70s and early '80s that have sustained significant staying power as longtime favorites of young house and disco DJs and original, still-active jocks alike. No dance music collection can be considered complete until at least half of these tracks are obtained, and the lesser cuts hardly qualify as fluff. The material culled here seems evenly split between the easy to obtain and the difficult to obtain; even if you're duplicating a couple songs with this, it's still worth tracking down; if you want everything here in its original vinyl state, you'll have to fork over an amount that easily exceeds the price of this one disc. Black Ivory's "Mainline," featuring a young LeRoy Burgess on vocals (one of house music's prime instigators, albeit unintentionally), is the most golden song here, and is arguably one of the greatest disco songs recorded. Other highlights include Martin Circus' "Disco Circus" (a brilliant number that has spent time on the turntables of Ron Hardy, Larry Levan, Derrick May, and Juan Atkins, to name only four), Roy Ayers' "Sweet Tears" (an overlooked jazz-funk/disco gem thanks to the popularity of his "Running Away"), and Dexter Wansel's "Life on Mars" (a speedy funk jam with spacy synthesizers that would go surprisingly well with the Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like an Eagle"). Like the first volume, Jumpin' 2 covers a lot of ground and acts as both a documentation and a collection of great dance music.