Daily News | Rediscovering Del Jones, the 1970s Philly funk bandleader and activist whose music is being reissued after 50 years
It only took 50 years, but Del Jones’ music — and his message — are being heard loud and clear, again.
The LP package puts forth Del Jones as “Underground Philadelphia’s response to Amiri Baraka’s and Gil Scott-Heron’s indictment of the Black American experience.” That’s not an overreach. The reissue lifts the cover off a little known chapter in Philadelphia music history, but it also gives new voice to inspired music, unjustly unheard. “It’s not just a feel-good hometown story,” said Philly DJ Cosmo Baker. “It’s that potent. It’s that good.
Deke Jones said Del was “the creative force” among the seven brothers who grew up in West Philly, sons of a World War II veteran and beautician father, Simeon, and mother Ellen, a nurse.was recorded in 1973 at Regent Sound, the studio at 309 S. Broad St. that was the home of-era Philly label Cameo-Parkway. Later, it would become an outpost of Sigma Sound Studios.
“Del was in a different lane,” said Alfie Pollitt, a Philly musician who played with Teddy Pendergrass and Billy Paul. He remembers gigs with Jones at Thomas Hall at Temple University with the Original Slave Singers, a vocal group he played piano with that sang Negro spirituals. But with the records issued on Jones’ Hikeka label without distribution, commercial reach was limited. In books he self-published in the 1980s and 1990s, Del Jones called himself a “war correspondent.”
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