ALBUM: The Funky Kings (1976)
First off, the Funky Kings aren’t.
Sorry but if you are going to put funk in your name, you better be Funkadelic. Otherwise, it’s like leading with your chin. This is nice folky, poppy, singer-songwriter-y music. But no funk in sight.
The Funky Kings were a super group of sorts. Too often they seemed under the influence of Kryptonite.
They started in 1976, a bunch of guys for whom there were high expectations. But the album — the one album — was like a feather in a gust of wind., spinning, floating, oops where did it go?
They don’t even have a Wikipedia page for chrissakes.
There was Jack Tempchin, Jules Shear, Richard Stekol, Bill Bodine, Frank Cotinol and Greg Leisz. It was SoCal easy swinging soft rock.
Tempchin was a prolific songwriter with the Eagles’ ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ and ‘Already Gone’ under his songwriting belt. Jules Shear went on to form Jules and Polar Bears which met with minor success.
The biggest hit on this Funky Kings album was “Slow Dancing’ a piece written byTempchin that is so soft and catchy, it made the Easy Listening charts. It took Johnny Rivers to cover it with a little more ooomph to put it high on the Billboard charts.
Don’t get me wrong there are nice songs on this, just not enough apparently to fuel a Wikipedia page 40 years later. Check out ‘My Old Pals.’