Funk Guitar

After racking up their biggest success to date with We're an American Band, Grand Funk Railroad decided to keep a good thing going by retaining Todd Rundgren as their producer and continuing to push their sound in a pop/rock direction…

The nine sides on Unk in Funk (1974) are among the last newly recorded material that Muddy Waters (vocals/guitar) would issue during his nearly 30 year association with Chess Records. Backing up the Chicago blues icon is a band he'd carry with him for the remainder of his performing career, including Pinetop Perkins (piano), Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson (guitar), Bob Margolin (guitar), Calvin "Fuzz" Jones (bass), and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith (drums). They run through a better than average selection of Waters' classics with newer compositions more or less tossed in, presumably to keep the track list fresh.

After racking up their biggest success to date with We're an American Band, Grand Funk Railroad decided to keep a good thing going by retaining Todd Rundgren as their producer and continuing to push their sound in a pop/rock direction…

A Longtime contributor to Guitar World magazine and the author and producer of literally hundreds of artist transcriptions, books, and instructional DVDs, Andy Aledort has influenced and inspired guitarists around the world for many years. During his tenure at Guitar World, Aledort has written lesson features on players such as Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Dimebag Darrell, and Yngwie Malmsteen, among others. He has also created many of Guitar World's best-selling instructional DVDs, including Play Rock Guitar, How to Play Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, and How to Play the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Axis: Bold as Love.

From 1974 through 1980, Johnny "Guitar" Watson was on a tear no one, including George Clinton or Bootsy Collins, could equal. While the P-Funk machine began to run out of steam by 1978 - with the exception of the Brides of Funkenstein - Watson kept churning out the weird, kinky funk well into the era of Rick James. Love Jones, his last fine record for quite awhile, had all the trademarks in place: the choppy, heavily reverbed and wah-wahed guitar that had made Watson a blues sensation, the sci-fi keyboards, the handclap that Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards ripped off for Chic, the expandable horn section that intertwined with the guitar riffs, and the punched up basic basslines that kept the funk a simple but ultimately moving thing.