Bloodstone (1972)

Bloodstone is one of the great forgotten treasures of seventies popular music.  Though the Kansas City-reared group would remain popular on the rhythm and blues circuit well into the twenty-first century,  they more or less fell out of favor with mainstream audiences following the the Top Ten success of their 1973 single "Natural High," a smooth soul ballad in the style of groups like the Stylistics and Blue Magic.  But Bloodstone were also adventurous explorers of the points at which funk and rock merge and become almost indistinguishable from each other.

Bloodstone's self-titled 1972 debut album (recorded in Britain and, inexplicably, released only there) is very much in that spirit.  Their sound incorporates Hendrix-style guitar passages with brittle, distorted notes and deceptively steady percussion carrying elliptical rhythms.  Songs such as the Sly Stone-inspired "Friendship" and the harrowing "Lady of the Night" crackle with energy and conviction, the instrumentation vibrating with a funky bass, with vocal harmonies owing as much to bands like War as to Bloodstone's own doo-wop roots.  "You Don't Mean Nothing," written by Bloodstone mainstay Charles McCormick, has a strong groove comparable to Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly," while the closing song, guitarist Charles Love's "Dumb Dude," is a heartfelt lament of lost love with gospel touches adorning a street-vibe slow jam.  

The biggest surprise on Bloodstone is the record's only cover, a take on Bobby Russell's "Little Green Apples." Easily one of the dumbest love songs ever written, "Little Green Apples" becomes a tour de force funk ballad in Bloodstone's hands, with a spaced-out arrangement and an infectious percussive undertow and warm, full vocals keeping in perfect rhythm with the music - stretched out to nine minutes, about nine times as long as anyone is willing to take any other version of this song.  That Bloodstone could make this song listenable - indeed, memorable - is indicative of just how spellbinding their otherwise exclusively original debut LP really is.