Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Jungle Love (1984)
When one thinks of hotbeds of funk, one doesn't necessarily think of Minneapolis, but one probably should. For a while there in the early '80s, shit was going down out there in the frozen Midwest and it was mostly due to the brilliance of one Prince Rogers Nelson.
As he was working toward superstardom, Prince was also working behind the scenes with other musicians. He had a clause in his contract with Warner Bros. that allowed him to find and produce other artists for the label. Prince came up with a band called The Time, which consisted of musicians from an existing Minneapolis funk act called Flyte Tyme: Jellybean Johnson on drums, Jimmy Jam and Monte Moir on keyboards and Terry Lewis on bass. The Purple One then added guitarist Jesse Johnson, singer Morris Day and backup singer/dancer Jerome Benton, who was Lewis' brother and served as Day's sidekick onstage.
Prince wrote all the material for the band, focusing on the funk pop he had done on his earlier albums while exploring different sounds for his own music. And indeed, Prince kept a tight rein on the proceedings, playing most of the instruments on the first three Time albums with the exception of Day's vocals; the band members were given credits on the album. Day played drums on the second and third albums and other members made some contributions. The band played the songs live on tour opening for Prince; they would also back up Vanity 6 behind a curtain.
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were fired after missing a show, and Moir left as well; Jam and Lewis were beginning to get into the producing game and went on to major success, most notably working with Janet Jackson. They were replaced and the Time marched on. The band had some minor hits on the R&B chart, but things didn't blow up until Purple Rain came out.
The Time's third album, Ice Cream Castle, included "Jungle Love" and "The Bird," both of which were performed in Purple Rain as the band was featured as a rival to Prince's The Kid. Day was a charismatic villain in the movie and those scenes along with the band performances helped the album go platinum.
"Jungle Love" is a premier funk jam and the video of the Time's performance of it in the movie was a hit on MTV, chock full of bass, synths and the band's synchronized dance moves.
"I, I've been watching you/I think I wanna know ya/I said, I, I'm a little dangerous/Girl, I'd love to show ya/My jungle love, yeah (oh we oh we oh)/I think I wanna know ya/Jungle love (oh we oh we oh)/Girl I need to show ya."
The mid-section of the video features Jerome bringing a mirror out so Morris can check himself out and then the band dances those iconic moves. The single version doesn't include Johnson's hot guitar solo.
"You, you've got a pretty car/I think I wanna drive it/I drive a little dangerous/Take you to my crib and rip you off/Look out, oh!/I think I wanna know ya/Oh, jungle love yeah/Girl I need to show ya/Come on baby, where's your guts?/You wanna make love or what?"
Thanks to the movie's popularity, "Jungle Love" went to #20 on the Billboard Hot 100, #6 on the Hot Black Singles chart and #9 on the Dance/Disco chart. The album hit #24 on the Billboard 200.
The band didn't get to bask in their success because Day and Johnson both left to pursue solo careers. The remaining members formed a short-lived band called The Family. In 1990, the original seven members of The Time reunited for Prince's Graffiti Bridge movie and a new album called Pandemonium, which featured the band's highest-charting hit "Jerk Out" as well as a song called "Donald Trump (Black Version)." The group split up not long afterward. A reformed Time (now called Morris Day and the Time) with some new members (basically everybody but Morris and Jerome) appeared in the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and toured.
The original lineup reunited again in 2008 for some shows in Las Vegas. In 2011, the band changed their name to The Original 7ven and released a new album called Condensate. After Prince's death in 2016, Morris Day & the Time played a tribute show in London. The original lineup played two songs at the 2017 Grammy Awards as part of a tribute to Prince. In 2022, the Prince Estate informed Day he couldn't use the name "Morris Day and the Time" without paying for it; the two sides ended the dispute last year.
No comments:
Post a Comment