Do the Funky Chicken

By 1970 Rufus Thomas had been doing this for decades and he had absolutely nothing to prove, which is exactly why this record works. The band hits a thick, churning funk groove and stays there, not going anywhere because going anywhere would be beside the point. The horns are less refined here than the tighter Stax productions of a few years earlier — they sit in the mix with a deliberate looseness, contributing to the sense of organized chaos that good late-sixties funk requires. Thomas turns in a performance that is more conductor than singer: he calls, the crowd responds, he narrates the dance moves with the enthusiasm of a man who is clearly doing them himself. His voice is older now, a little thicker, but it has an authority that younger performers simply cannot manufacture. The genius of the track is that it is both completely ridiculous and completely sincere — Thomas means every word of his enthusiasm, and that sincerity is what keeps it from being mere novelty. It documents a specific moment when Black American popular music was pushing rhythm to the foreground and melody to the background, discovering that the body could be an instrument if you gave it the right instructions. This is party music in the most literal sense, designed for a specific physical context, and it absolutely does not work at low volume or while sitting still. It belongs to cookouts, to basement parties, to any room where people have decided to stop being self-conscious.