In the Raw: Cane and Able

Coming out of Long Island, LARB found itself in a marketplace that sported more than a few groups which bore some musical similarity to the funk and psych stuff that the band made use of. That being as good a reason as any to move to Paris, the band relocated in 1971.

A few auspicious meetings resulted with LARB functioning as the session band for Pierre Jaubert's Parisound studio. The group would go on to release a few discs and subsequently be sampled by an endless number of top tier producers. Even as Soul Makossa is today revered as a classic, most of LARB's work is pretty staid and boring to wade through.

Some of that middling music was eventually relayed on Cane and Able's self-titled long player, released in 1972. Saving the disc, though, was a well construed Wilson Picket cover. After the fuzzy guitar intro that could have announced the opening to a Black Sabbath track, most of "Don't Knock My Love" emerges as jazz fusion not unrelated to Eddie Henderson's work with Herbie Hancock.

Part of what allows Cane and Able - and specifically "Don't Knock My Love" - to come off better than anything LARB was able to summon is the prominent feature of Tony Lytle (trombone) and Hasan Tayratira (trumpet), who were both refugees from James Brown's horn section. The pair's inclusion on this disc might only have had a minute impact on the actual recording process. It's unquestionable, though, that without the assist from the brass section, Cane and Able really wouldn't be worth mentioning at this point even as the group would record a bit more prior to calling it a day.