Click the image for your own copy of “Doing Their Own Thing.”

Brilliant funk. Doing Their Own Thing.

Recorded and released after a mutiny by most of James Brown’s late-’60s band, Doing Their Own Thing contains 12 slabs of superb early-’70s style funk. Mostly instrumental, radio play for the album and subsequent singles appears to have been blocked by James himself. The saxophone lynchpin of the James Brown band, Maceo Parker was the featured horn on such JB classics as Papa’s Gotta A Brand New Bag and I Got You (I Feel Good). In May 1970, Maceo and his brother Melvin, dissatisfied with the lack of independent recognition achieved within the Brown band, decided to hit out on their own. Taking with them the majority of James’ then band (a few others had left already including St Clair Pinckney, Sweet Charles Sherrell, Marva Whitney and Fred Wesley), Maceo formed his own aggregation – the appropriately-named Maceo & All The King’s Men. Their first album was released on House Of The Fox Records and (also appropriately enough) titled Doing Their Own Thing. Two singles were released from that album – Got To Getcha and Funky Women.

The band broke up in May ’72 and the members rejoined James Brown’s new band The JBs (which included such youngbloods as Phelps and Bootsy Collins, recruited while the rest of the band were doing their own thang). Maceo went on to play in the various George Clinton P-Funkster groups and eventually cut a new album – Southern Exposure – in the company of Pee Wee Ellis, Fred Wesley, a couple of The Meters and The Rebirth Brass Band.

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