Special thanks to my man Rickey "Uhuru Maggot" Vincent for supplying the Amoeblog with his enlightening Top Ten Funk Sessions of 2010 list that includes the likes of Bernie Worrell's SociaLybrium, Nick Rosen, and Punk Funk Mob. In addition to his Top Ten, Vincent has included some "also digging" additional picks.

Rickey Vincent, who was interviewed about his favorite topic here last year, literally wrote the book on funk music.
Vincent's acclaimed music history book Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of The One (St. Martin's Press), which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, is the ultimate guide to funk music and its rich history.

Rickey Vincent, who many know from his long-running, popular KPFA 94.1FM radio show The History of Funk (10pm-midnight Fridays) knows more about funk than anyone I know. Not surprisingly, as well as being an author & journalist, he is also an educator on the subject and has taught classes at both City College of San Francisco and SF State University.

Vincent's 2010 Top Ten follows:



Another year and another wide ranging collection of funky discs have come my way, and I’m going to share my favorite ones from the year. The best criteria I can give is that these discs have been playing in my iPod nonstop since they came out. Simple as that.

Garry "Diaperman" Shider, musician and band leader of George Clinton's P-Funk All Stars who earned his nickname for his habit of wearing diapers onstage, died yesterday following complications arising from brain and lung cancer. He was only 56. Also nicknamed "Starchild," Shider had been an official member of Clnton's funk ensemble since 1972. 

A Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, the Plainfield, New Jersey native began performing music in church but it was his introduction in the late 1960's to George Clinton in the NJ barbershop that Clinton owned, and that acted as the funk master's office, that would shape the rest of Shider's musical career, but not immediately. 

It was after the teenaged Shider left to go pursue his musical dreams in Canada, where he formed the funk-rock group United Soul (aka U.S.), that he heard from Clinton again. In 1971 Clinton produced tracks for a one-off single on Westbound (recently reissued on CD) by the band that Shider had formed with his NJ childhood friend Cordell "Boogie" Mosson.  A year later Shider joined Clinton's musical ensemble.

Once a member, Shider became a key vocalist, guitarist, writer and arranger for Parliament Funkadeliic and P-Funk All Stars for near four full decades. As such he toured the world with Clinton's freeform funk ensemble numerous times. I was fortunate enough to catch many P-Funk shows over the years, which, like Grateful Dead shows, could morph into long extended jams, but the brilliance of these hypnotic funk jams, which were like organized chaos, was how bandleader Shider would always eventually rein them back in musically.

Rickey Vincent literally wrote the book on funk. The college professor, writer, and radio DJ, who resides in Berkeley CA with his wife and two sons, is the author of the acclaimed music history book Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of The One (St. Martin's Press) which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. If you don't already have this book, with a forward by George Clinton, I highly recommended it since it is the most comprehensive study on funk.

In addition to being an author & journalist, Vincent has taught at City College of San Francisco and SF State University where he taught a course entitled Protest Music Since 1965: Funk, Rap and the Black Revolution. Rickey is also a longtime Bay Area radio DJ at stations KALX and KPFA, where he still hosts his popular weekly funk show The History of Funk, Fridays at 10PM on 94.1FM.

The widely respected funkateer's musical knowledge (and music collection) is unmatched. I recently caught up with Vincent to talk about the funk/hip-hop connection and the impact of funk and black music in general on both American and global cultures, among other things. The conversation inevitably turned to godfather of soul / funk pioneer James Brown a few times during the interview. 

Vincent is currently finishing up last minute details on his next book Party Music -- a fascinating historical account of the Black Panther Party's own funk band, Oakland's The Lumpen, who took popular funk songs and rhythms but substituted more revolutionary lyrics. (Look for a future interview with him about this upon its publication.) For more information on the author, you can visit Rickey Vincent's website or his MySpace. You can also read his book or check out his show on KPFA.