black death

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It's black history month in the US and to mark the occasion I thought I'd delve into black musical history. It would be easy to mention the roots of soul, funk, R&B, hip-hop, blues, jazz, more or less any genre but I thought I'd go with punk. Up until now I thought punk rock was an exclusively white affair until DJ Don Letts played reggae to the Bromley contingent at the legendary punk rock haunt, the Roxy.  But recently I read about 3 brothers from Detroit who made pioneering garage punk before the genre had been given a name.

Brothers Bobby, Dannis and David Hackney had what can only be described as an epiphany after seeing the Who and Alice Cooper in concert. They eschewed the funk and disco and chose the path of hard rock. Even now with global and instant access to every genre of music it would be hard to imagine 3 ordinary black kids choosing this route but when it's 1974 and in Motor City it seems too far-fetched to be true. 

In 1975, they recorded 7 songs at United Sounds Studios under the name 'Death'. The thought behind this was to turn the ultimate negative word into something positive. After local success, they released one of these tracks a year later with the financial backing of Clive Davis, head of Arista. He obviously saw something in the band and urged them to change their name. They stuck to their guns however and said no at which point Davis lost interest in the band, no doubt well aware how difficult it would be to market them. They were left playing local gigs and in 1977 they upped sticks and moved to Vermont, changed the band's name to 4th Movement and also the music direction. 4th Movement were now a mixture of gospel and hard rock. 

The band fizzled out a few years later with 2 minor selling albums and brother David moved back to Detroit where he died in 1990. The 2 remaining brothers formed Lambsbread, a reggae band and continue to record with relatively more success. So the story would have ended but in 2003 a Death song was included on a punk bootleg and they began to finally get the attention they deserved. Thankfully, Death has reformed with David's place taken by Lambsbread guitarist, Bobby Duncan and last month the album 'Spiritual, Mental, Physical' was released to considerable critical acclaim. 

It's tales like this that, in my opinion, really make a mockery of the way black music is pigeon-holed into cliched 'urban music' and patronised with award shows such as the MOBOs. Enough ranting from me, let's get to the important stuff; the music. What did Death sound like? It sounds to me as if Hendrix was jamming with Deep Purple. Make no mistake though, this is hard rock but with an early punk attitude that John Lydon would have given his milk teeth for. Imagine how this tune would have gone down at the Roxy.