Dolemite Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Dolemite Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

1975

Generation International Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Dolemite  2. The Queen  3. Do You Still Care  4. The Rumble  5. Mayor's Get-Away  6.  Power Of Your Love  7. Willie Green  8. When We Start Making Love  9. The Hitmen  10. Ghetto Expressions  11. Time Is On Our Side  12. Creeper  13. The Jive Jungle  14. Flatland




Oh man, I've always been a lifelong Rudy Ray Moore fan... I believe I've covered this particular obsession in detail here... 

So yea, it's no surprise that when I run across a Rudy Ray Moore record it's coming home with me...I mean, check out that cover! Look at that fist! 

Try to work out the physics in your head! You can't! His head is just bent as hell, the arm and fist all have absurdly forced (and skewed!!) perspective...The whole mess is just glorious...But if it was right, it wouldn't be Dolemite...The dude was putting up his own money! He couldn't afford Drew Struzan! He had to hire some guy who had no idea how anatomy or perspective worked and ended up with one of the most memorable movie posters of all time! Same goes for his film's soundtracks which Rudy usually handled himself...To be honest I kinda forgot that he didn't sing the stuff himself like he did in some of his later films...The album's music is credited to Soul Rebellion Orchestra as conducted by Rudy Ray Moore but he actually has other people handling the vocals...Motown's Mary Love handles the slow-jams, Revelation Funk (?) handles one and two are sung by CARLY SIMON'S AND JAMES TAYLOR'S YET-TO-BE-BORN OFFSPRING, BEN TAYLOR!!!

Nah, it's just some other unknown guy with the same name...Rudy's ballsy, low budget style has always manged to coat all his productions in an extra grimy layer of funk...You can't touch this record without getting funk all over your hands...I guess the genre would be called "Blaxploitation Soundtrack" music...Lots of wah wah'd guitars, honking horns and rutting bass-lines...Some of the slower stuff, such as Ben Taylor's "Do You Still Care" sounds like it's on the verge of going out of tune, perfectly capturing the warped wobble of cheap film stock and sticky cinema floors...Or maybe it's just my copy...

 The album's at its best though during the brief, whikka-whikka introduction snippets such as "Willie Green," "The Hitman" and "Creeper" which is nothing less than the theme song for the greatest character to ever grace the silver screen...Ladies and gentlemen, I speak of no other but the legendary Hamburger Pimp himself...

Sheeeyiiiit...I ain't sayin' nothing...

The one criticism I have is the utter lack of the hoarse, shouted, comedy stylings of Rudy Ray Moore...No snippets of the film's legendary dialogue or comedy routines until the final track "Flatlands" where Rudy gives one of his legendary epic-length Dolemite boasts...My God, he seriously refers to himself as "the baddest rapper known from coast to coast" on this...Yes, Rudy Ray Moore was rapping back in 1975...Hell, as far as I can tell he was rapping as far back as 1970 when the Dolemite character first appeared on record...

Recommended if you're a Rudy ray Moore fanatic or have a deep taste for blaxpoitation soundtracks...Keep in mind, Rudy couldn't afford Curtis Mayfield or Isaac Hayes, so this is to blaxploitation soundtracks what Dolemite is to blaxploitation films..A more head-scratching, lower budget variation on the theme...Even if you haven't seen the film, when you play this you'll still somehow be able to see the boom mic, if that makes sense...

Alright, you born insecure, rat soup eatin' motherfuckers, let's listen to a track by the bad man himself...Here's "Flatland" by Dolemite...Can you dig it?