Ramon Morris - Sweet Sister Funk

Sweet Sister Funk is the only album Ramon Morris ever made as a bandleader, and it has been quietly feeding hip hop producers for three decades.

Morris spent his career as the kind of saxophonist other people wanted in the room, cutting his teeth with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers before working alongside Reuben Wilson, Shirley Scott, Woody Shaw, and the Rashied Ali Quintet. In 1973 he finally stepped out front, for Sonny Lester's Groove Merchant label with Lester producing, and brought a band worth the wait: Cecil Bridgewater on trumpet, Mickey Roker on drums, Albert Dailey on electric piano. Seven tracks, and then he never led another session.

First Come, First Serve opens on a percussion and bass intro so heavy it was always destined for a sampler, before Morris and Bridgewater start trading phrases like a conversation they've had a hundred times. Their cover of The Stylistics' People Make the World Go Round is the album's sublime centrepiece, Don't Ask Me carries a swinging horn intro later lifted wholesale for a Big Pun single, and Wijinia drifts toward the spiritual jazz territory Strata East and Black Jazz were mapping at the time.

DJ Premier, The Alchemist, and DJ Shadow all found something here. Now the whole record is back where it started.