Ohio Players was probably my first real exposure to funk. In 1973, just as I was beginning to be music-crazy, they had an infectious hit single, “Funky Worm,” that was like nothing I had heard before in my admittedly short listening life. Despite having hit #15 on the US charts, and apparently being a hugely sampled song in hiphop, I mostly get blank looks when I tell people about “Funky Worm.” But it was absolutely among the very first singles I ever bought.
Then just a year or so later, their career-defining hit “Fire” came out. It was ubiquitous, it was funky, it WAS 1974. And I’m sure I had the single of that as well (though, like a lot of people, I abused my 45s and at some point lost a bunch of them and didn’t even care).
But what I didn’t buy was the album “Fire.” Or any Ohio Players albums. And the reason was their covers. There was no way for 14-year-old me to buy an album with a cover that sexy and bring it home – and this would be, arguably, the least salacious of their covers.
Nothing against it – sex sells, women are beautiful, it was the ’70s, etc. But a cover that essentially looked like a Playboy magazine cover? I could not have brought that into my house. …. I’m still waiting for my mother to have “the talk” with me. I got into trouble for playing an Elton John song called “Jamaica Jerk-Off” (which I lied my way out of) – this was not gonna fly.
So, I never owned this or any Ohio Players until just a few years ago, when I realized it was insane that I didn’t own “Fire,” a song that was so emblamatic. So I picked this up at a local record store, and it helped to kickstart my late-in-life extreme expansion into the world of funk.
