Don Blackman

Blackman came from the jazz world, but spent time in the fusion-funk hybrid that hovered around the edges of the chart in that transitional period of the early ’80s. Although it slipped between the cracks at the time, Don Blackman is a minor funk masterpiece that deserves shelf space next to Fuzzy Haskins’s A Whole Nother Thang, Bernie Worrell’s Blacktronic Science, Trey Lewd’s Drop the Line and others. Though those albums turn up on most P-Funk expanded discographies, Blackman’s record often doesn’t because there’s no playing or production from Clinton, Collins or Worrell. It might make more sense to think of it at the center of a Venn diagram whose circles include P-Funk, the jazz-funk practiced by artists like George Duke and Roy Ayers and the soul-funk of Fonzi Thornton and Garfield Fleming. Right in the middle, shining brightly, Don Blackman.