Groove Me

The title track on this 1979 album makes perfect sense: it’s a King Curtis funk classic remade for disco dancefloors in the then brand new style of Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer. Wonderful. The other two big tracks, though, are a little odder. “Baby Let me Kiss You” is another KC cover, and also has an “I Feel Love” style synth chug, but it’s much slower, and has a reggae feel - bizarrely pre-empting digital dancehall. “Together we Are Beautiful” has more conventional disco orchestration but also a rocksteady/reggae undercurrent (so no surprise it has had a couple of beautiful lovers rock covers by Samantha Rose and Susan Cadogan). The rest of the album has mainly been overlooked, and perhaps understandably as it’s pretty high-sugar-content stuff, but really unfairly. The three other disco tracks are gossamer light, and at the right moment can lift you up into the air with them — and the ballad “Sun, Moon, Rain,” bizarrely but brilliantly, is a full-on country hymn to female patience, which Dolly Parton could take to the bank if she covered it. A peculiar record, all told, but a delightful one.