Cosmic Funk

by Lonnie Liston Smith, Lonnie Liston Smith & the Cosmic Echoes

Overview

As Dean Rudland points out in Ace's 2014 reissue of Lonnie Liston Smith's 1974 set Cosmic Funk, Smith himself views this LP as a transitional effort, capturing him between his pioneering work with Miles Davis' electric group and the exploratory Expansions. This suggests it perhaps isn't a cohesive album and, true enough, it's a record where the good ideas are sometimes suggested rather than developed. Much of the record showcases the smooth vocal stylings of Smith's brother Donald, who leads on a vocal version of John Coltrane's "Naima," lends a bit of a supper club vibe to "Beautiful Woman," croons through "Peaceful Ones," and dives into the thick, overlapping grooves of the title track. That opening song is one of the few tracks that emphasizes funk, otherwise the cosmic reigns, as the group usually getting spacy all the while never quite leaving the earth. Although the group is quite lively on a relatively straight-ahead reading of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," the album is distinguished by the spaces that lie between funk and bop, the periods where Smith and company start to float, then pull themselves back. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Product Details

Release Date:	06/07/2024
Label:	Real Gone Music
UPC:	0848064017615
Rank:	163193

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Lonnie Liston Smith   Primary Artist,Piano (Electric),Percussion,Vocals,Guitar,Piano
Lonnie Liston Smith & the Cosmic Echoes   Primary Artist
George Barron   Sax (Soprano),Percussion,Flute
Al Anderson   Bass (Electric),Bass
Ron Bridgewater   Percussion
Art Gore   Drums
Doug Hammond   Percussion
Andrew Cyrille   Percussion
Donald Smith   Vocals,Piano,Flute
Lawrence Killian   Percussion,Congas

Technical Credits

Ray Ross   Photography
Jean-Pierre Chalbos   Remastering
Charles Stewart   Cover Photo
Haig Adishian   Design
Daniel Baumgarten   Reissue Producer
Wayne Shorter   Composer
Lonnie Liston Smith   Composer
John Coltrane   Composer
James Mtume   Composer
Alex Dutilh   Liner Notes
Bob Simpson   Engineer
Bob Thiele   Producer