1973 WL promo Johnny Pate “Shaft In Africa” on ABC Records

I mean, yeah, it’s not Isaac Hayes, or Richard Roundtree, or One Bad Mutha or even close. Fine, okay, Black Moses has left the house. Did Shaft really need to go Africa? Couldn’t he have just hit Miami or something? And how do you wear an ankle-length leather trench coat in downtown Lagos without dying of heat exhaustion anyway? Yup, much like the movie, “Shaft In Africa” should not be compared to the OG. On the other hand, we all live in the shadow of our famous brother/father/badass pimp detective, don’t we? If you take this record on its own merits, you still gotta come correct, and it’s actually pretty effing cool. For one thing, Johnny Pate has some seriously killer and way underrated records under his belt, and if you haven’t ever spun “Outrageous”, for instance, you should acquire now, and I mean like right this second. I also really love his Johnny Pate Trio record with the MIGHTY and insanely great basically unknown pianist Ronnell Bright.

​So, okay, how does this bop bassist, big band conductor/vocal jazz arranger dude segue into the world of hard funk and Blaxploitation banging soundtracks? With style, my friends, with style. “You Can’t Even Walk In The Park” is both the opening theme of the film and moneycut of the record, and is worth the price of vinyl admission alone, wacka-wacka-wacka galore with a KILLER break! It’s cool to have an orchestral take on the funk arrangement thing, and the conga/drum combo leading into a snake-charmer interlude and then back to Wah Wah Watson territory is a serious groove. Of course, they slapped on the Four Tops “Are You Man Enough”, and that works nicely as well. Tops!