KOOL AND THE GANG – LIVE AT THE SEX MACHINE LP – Nr MINT/EXC+ 1971 JAZZ FUNK SOUL

Kool And The Gang – Live At The Sex Machine
(De-Lite Records  1971  DEP2008  US Pressing)

Vinyl in Nr MINT/Excellent+ condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality apart from some light pops/crackles)

Gatefold Sleeve in Very Good+ condition
– some wear to edges/corners & some ringwear – split all along bottom edge on front gatefold & a little along top

Kool & the Gang are an American jazz, R&B, soul, funk and disco group, originally formed in 1964 as the Jazziacs based in Jersey City, New Jersey.

They went through several musical phases during the course of their recording career, starting out with a purist jazz sound, then becoming practitioners of funk and R&B, progressing to a smooth pop-funk ensemble, and in the post-millennium creating music with a modern, electro-pop sound.

They have sold over 70 million albums worldwide.

The group’s main members over the years included brothers Robert Bell (Muhammad Bayyan) on bass and Ronald Bell (Khalis Bayyan) on tenor saxophone, lead vocalist James “J.T.” Taylor, George Brown on drums, Larry Gittens on trumpet, Dennis Thomas on alto saxophone, Claydes Charles Smith on guitar, and Rick West (Westfield) on keyboards.

Live at the Sex Machine is the first live album released by the funk band Kool and the Gang. The album was released in 1971, and reached No. 6 on the Billboard R&B Albums chart. Not only was it a Top 10 album, it stayed on the chart for 33 weeks; an impressive time span compared to most albums of the era. Although the band’s huge success would not come until a few albums later, this release was popular with the R&B market. Like most of their early catalog, it was sampled by several artists during hip-hop’s “Golden Era” of the 1980s and early 1990s. The track “Funky Man” was sampled in “Smack My Bitch Up” by the Prodigy.