June is Junie Month here on Edge of the Line. Each Friday, we’re paying tribute to funk legend Walter “Junie” Morrison.
Junie Morrison had seen the Ohio Players perform at his high school. He described them as “spectacular” and “by far the most progressive band” he had ever seen. Morrison later competed against them in a battle of a bands. When Junie started high school (likely 1971, being born in 1954), Ohio Players had only released one album, Observations in Time (1969). Junie joined for Pain and Pleasure, both released in 1972, and the following year’s Ecstasy. Pleasure had Ohio Player’s first big hit, ‘Funky Worm’.
In a similar vein to James Brown’s music effectively questioning, and shifting, the verse-chorus structure of Western pop songs, here the Ohio Players barely get close to any conventional verse. There is no chorus. The closest thing to a pop song’s hook may be a toss up between the horn line (abandoned in the song’s second half), the synth melody from 0:51, and the chord progression shared between the bass and guitar (which Junie played, along with the synth that represents the worm).
Junie found the synth, an ARP Soloist, “somewhere in NYC”. He told Red Bull Music Academy that the instrument “sung” to him; he heard “an Arabian style riff that had ‘worm’ written all over it”.
Although there are catchy melodies, they’re hardly the focus of the song. And just when you think you might have found a footing in the structure, there’s a new, sci-fi synth part or, when a chorus might appear, instead a voice says, “Like nine cans of shaving powder, that’s funky”.
Rather than a more melodic line—“He plays guitar without any hands”—being followed in the same voice, the next line isn’t sung at all but spoken by a freaky, cartoonish character (“When he grabs his guitar and starts to pluck”) – courtesy of Junie, who masterminded the track. He described the voice as a “granny” that “cement[ed] the track together.” Until then, “everyone [was] staring through the control room glass with puzzled looks on their faces”.
We heard that voice in the opening seconds with “He’s the funkiest worm in the world”. It’s the type of fun that Junie would later have with Funkadelic and soon enough, songs like ‘Deep’ by sibling act Parliament. “Do we get paid for this?”
After the three albums with Ohio Players, Junie joined Parliament-Funkadelic as musical director. But in the middle of his stints with Ohio Players and P-Funk, Morrison made three records of his own, beginning a long solo career. Next week, we’ll dig a solo cut.
Top image from Discogs.