Shake Your Rump To The Funk
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Album Summary
Shake Your Rump To The Funk dropped in 1976 on the legendary Stax Records, and honey, it arrived like a thunderclap on a hot Memphis summer night. The Bar-Kays — those survivors, those warriors who rebuilt themselves from the ground up after tragedy — stepped into the studio and produced this record themselves alongside Stax's production team, and what they laid down was nothing short of a declaration. This was the Bar-Kays planting their flag firmly in the funk universe, shedding the last threads of their earlier soul-revue identity and strapping on something harder, greasier, and altogether more dangerous. Recorded during the final, flickering years of Stax Records, the album captured a band fully locked in, their instrumentation tightened like a drum head in July, every note in service of the groove.
Reception
- The title track earned significant airplay on R&B and funk-focused radio stations, cementing the Bar-Kays' reputation as one of the most formidable funk outfits working out of Memphis in the mid-1970s.
- The album performed respectably on the R&B charts, signaling that the Bar-Kays had successfully completed their transition into the funk market and were being taken seriously as heavyweight contenders.
Significance
- This album stands as a testament to the resilience and creative rebirth of the Bar-Kays, representing their fullest embrace of the hard funk aesthetic at a moment when Memphis soul was reshaping itself for a new decade.
- Shake Your Rump To The Funk is a cornerstone document of the Stax Records funk era, demonstrating how the Memphis soul tradition could be fused with the percussive, horn-driven funk grooves that were setting dance floors on fire across America in the mid-1970s.
- The album showcases the Bar-Kays' extraordinary musicianship — their horn arrangements hit with the precision of a surgeon and the swagger of a street preacher, and their rhythmic pocket is so deep you could lose yourself in it.
Samples
- Shake Your Rump To The Funk — one of the most sampled funk records to come out of the Stax catalog, lifted repeatedly by hip-hop producers for its irresistible drum breaks and bass lines across the golden era of sampling.
Tracklist
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A Shake Your Rump To The Funk 112
3:28
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B Summer Of Our Love 150
3:40
Artist Details
The Bar-Kays are a funk and soul powerhouse that rose up out of Memphis, Tennessee in the mid-1960s, originally coming together as the house band for Stax Records and backing the legendary Otis Redding before tragedy struck in 1967 when most of the original members perished in the same plane crash that took Redding himself. The group rebuilt, reinvented, and came roaring back into the 1970s with a harder, grittier funk sound that put them right in the pocket alongside the heaviest grooves of the era, earning them a devoted following with cuts that made dance floors shake from coast to coast. Their survival and reinvention stands as one of the most remarkable comeback stories in Black music history, cementing their legacy not just as musicians, but as a testament to resilience and the enduring spirit of Memphis soul.
