Listen & Learn: Philly Disco &The Vocoder

50 years before Roger Troutman glimpsed the future of funk with “More Bounce to the Ounce” the vocoder was invented by Bell Labs to further secure encrypted military radio transmissions. In Dave Tompkins’ book, How to Wreck a Nice Beach ”—music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin’s gulags, from the 1939 World’s Fair to Hiroshima, from artificial larynges to Auto-Tune.”To compliment the book, Tompkins’ and DJ Monk-One put together this mix“The Bees in Your Beargut” or “Bonus Beach”Visit the official book site for uber-detailed liner-notes and full tracklistingIf you’ve seen the eye-opening documentary, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, you’d know that the Funk Brothers were the criminally overlooked studio musicians responsible for creating the Motown sound that ended up “on more number-one hits than The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys combined.” By the mid-seventies, the Motown sound was losing ground to what was going down in Philly, where another gang of bad cats, The Family, were the back-bone for a string of cocaine catchy hits from producers Gamble & Huff and crooners Teddy Pendergrass, Harold Melvin, and The Trammps.French DJ and arguably the greatest living ambassador of disco, Dimitri from Paris, recently released Get Down With the Philly Sound, a double-disc compilation collecting the essential disco recordings from 1973-1980. Try before you buy with this mix Dimitri cooked up for the occasion.Dimitri from Paris – Philly Sound Promo MixHooked? Dig deeper into the details of the music that changed club culture with this film featuring the founder of Sigma Sound Studios, Joe Tarsia as well as the legendary Earl Young of the infamous Baker, Harris, Young Rhythm Section aka The Family. *BONUS Cookie Monster Disco Jam