Rasputin’s Stash – Your Love Is Certified from the Cotillion 45

It’s Friday and time to dip into some Funk again. I’m trying to recover from a night out seeing the Beastie Boys live from the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. I am a major Beastie fan, and definitely into their instrumentals ( I can remember ordering the In Sound from Way Out from the back of Grand Royal for $10 bucks!), but this show was the mature B-Boys, opting for Gang of Four inspired instrumentals, almost a Beastie Lite if you will. They get better with age like a fine wine, and a small place like the Borgata was a great venue to check them out. I’m gonna write a bit more on the show over the weekend. Now on to a nice little side I picked up recently. Come on over to Curtis Mayfield country, Chicago, Illinois, and dip into Rasputin’s Stash, with “Your Love Is Certified” on Cotillion Records.

This record was recorded with the original eight member line up of Rasputin’s Stash. Comprised of studio session musicians, the group itself was put together by Chicago session musician Martin Dumas, Jr. It featured a superb line up of Chicago session guys, who put out their self title debut on Atlantic subsidiary Cotillion in 1971. Unfortunately, in between the first and second record, they lost 4 members, and by the time their sophmore record was out, RS was a quartet. They made the jump to Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom off shoot Gemigo, released another self titled record before Curtom was finally engulfed by a larger record company (Warner, RSO). RS was not kept in the stable. They recorded up until about 1977 before disbanding. Rediscovered in the 90’s by hip hop producers and diggers, RS got a whole new audience, and songs like “Mr. Cool” ( another track on the What It Is Box set) became a sought after side.

Your Love Is Certified” fits right along side ( if not takes inspiration) with some of the early Funk coming out of Chicago: Baby Huey, the Blues Funk of Magic Sam, General Crook, not to mention Curtis Mayfield, along with others. There is a good portion of heavy funk guitar, chunky bass, and a nice organ moving in and out of the horns, which could add a bit of a Psychedelic Soul sound (possibly borrowed from Baby Huey and the Babysitters?) to the mix. The up tempo drums round out this equal P-Funk and Sly Stone influenced side. They might have been from Chicago, but they definitely knew how to add a West Coast, and a Motor City sound to their own sound. Besides high pitch screams to punctuate why her love is certified, lines like “I’m like a bee that stings when he ain’t got no money” and “Baby when you come to me/ I don’t worry cause it’s COD” push this Funk nugget into a nice little dance floor number. It’s no titty shaker, but this will move a crowd. I have to be honest and say I never see a RS 45 out in the field. My man M.Fasis whipped out a “Mr. Cool” 45 that he got in the West Village for like a dollar, and I remember thinking how lucky he was to pick it up, so when I saw “Certified”, I definitely could not pass it up for $2. This is one of the sides I selected for the Guest 1st Anniversary Mix for DJ Blueprint over at This Is Tomorrow , which drops Monday. I hope you dug it as much as I did. See you this weekend with some more digging stories. Keep Diggin’!