You never know what to expect on the three albums "Junie" made with the Players. Marching band horn arrangements battle dissonant jazzy piano, before they both give way to a stomping bass line. Even the cartooniest Bootsy Collins albums from a few years later are less unpredictable than many "Junie"/Ohio Players tracks. Tight as the Players are, "Junie" works hard to keep them off balance. These albums had covers featuring a bald woman in various S&M poses, twenty years before "fetish fashion" became cool.

Without "Junie", the groove was still tight, but the arrangements were less fantastic. Songs like "Skin Tight", "Fire", "Fopp", and "Love Rollercoaster" took hold of a nasty groove and sat on it for anywhere up to seven minutes, until it became irresistibly stanky. Being less unpredictable meant the band could showcase what a well- drilled unit it was.

The word former band members often use in interviews these days is "craftsmanship". They crafted those grooves carefully, and played

Drummer James "Diamond" Williams recently told the "Dayton Daily News" that he made a mistake about six minutes into "Skin Tight". At that point, the band wasn't about to go back and re-record the whole thing from the beginning, so they left it in. Now, he has to make sure he plays that same mistake every night, because people want to hear it.

So why did my former boss think one of the most important bands in the history of Funk (and music, period) were a tacky disco band?

There's the fact that in the mid-70s, the Players started to embrace disco, the way a lot of 70s funk acts did. They recorded an ultra-cheesy song called "Feel The Beat (Everybody Disco)" in 1976, and started to have more of a disco sound thereafter, even though they kept recording plenty of funk as well.

But there's also the fact that the kind of slick dance funk the Players started to do

Even "Love Rollercoaster", which I consider a funk song, has a disco rhythm that "Diamond" Williams deliberately breaks up with lots of random kick drum beats, making it much more interesting than most disco. That song kind of sums up the slippery slope the Players were on: it's a disco song where the drummer is fighting the disco beat every inch of the way.

After a while, the Players seemed to project more of an image of "Players" in the sense that blaxploitation movies (see end of article) were making standard usage. Their album covers got to be more and more oriented to soft porn, and the grooves got slicker and more sugary. Every late 70s album had one or two funk classics, though, like "Take De Funk Off, Fly" from their ultra-disco 1979 album "Everybody Up".

The Ohio Players are still touring now, but two of the three founding members, Clarence "Satch" Satchell and Ralph "Pee Wee" Middlebrook, sadly died last year.

Six classic Ohio Players albums. Get them if you can...

"Pain" (1971 Westbound -- CD import only):
You can hear the Players branching out beyond their R&B roots, doing the R&B-tinged "I Wanna Hear From You" and the blues tune "The Reds" with serious doses of jazz and funk on top. Listen for "Junie" Morrison's jarring keyboards on every track, not to mention his improvised vocal on "Pain", which was supposed to be an instrumental. This is what it's all about.

"Pleasure" (1972 Westbound -- CD import only):
This is the finished product. If "Pain" sounded at times as if the R&B roots were battling the jazz-funk influences for control, this album is a perfect fusion. Listen to "Pride And Vanity", which has more breaks than Jackie Chan's bones, and tell me that isn't jazz-funk with a capital FUNK. The big hit off this album was "The Funky Worm", where Granny tries to pimp a guitar-playing annelid on top of the bass line that launched a thousand hips. My boss thought this song was about the bottom of a tequila bottle at first.

"Skin Tight" (1974 Mercury -- available everywhere):
And talk about bass lines! I always feel sorry for James "Diamond" Williams, the drummer, having to keep up with the bass line for "Skin Tight", 'cause it's a mother. The emphasis on this album is more on straight funk and ballads, since "Junie" Morrison had gone off to do his own thang. But that gives the Players a chance to show where they got their name, staying incredibly tight over some nasty grooves. "Jive Turkey" is the jam where they show off their chops to the best advantage. Without "Junie", they're less showy, but they never let you forget what a tight band they are. "Heaven Must Be Like This" is a classic slow jam.

"Fire" (1975 Mercury -- available everywhere):
The title track locks into another nasty groove. The big surprise is "I Want To Be Free", which keeps throwing you off balance with nasty drum and bass breaks in the middle of a slushy ballad, with a craziness that "Junie" would have approved of.

If you can't find these six albums, try "Orgasm: The Best Of The Westbound Years", an import CD that combines a lot of the first three albums on this list; and "Funk On Fire", a US 2-CD set that covers the period after "Junie" left the band.

* The Ohio Players recorded the first ever techno song ("The Controller's Mind" from "Mr Mean", 1978)

* The Ohio Players supposedly invented the phrase "Say what!" (You can hear lead vocalist Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner barking it out on their 1975 classic "Love Rollercoaster". The term was an in-joke among the band members, the legend goes.)

* That scream halfway through the song "Fire" isn't a woman being murdered in the studio next door, as many believe. Nor is it the woman on the record cover who they poured honey all over screaming as they peeled the stuff off after it dried. Mind you, we don't actually know what that scream really was.

* It's Sugarfoot's growl that Prince is trying to imitate on his "Funky Stuff" remix of "Space" from a few years back. The man knows his influences, and so should you. (He covered "Skin Tight" live a few times, I hear. But stay away from the Carmen Electra version he produced! That recording is Singled Out for unfunkiness!)

Blaxploitation is a word for a genre of movies that came along in the early 70s which were basically exploitation movies for black audiences, featuring lots of sex and violence. They usually featured a pimp or private eye main character with lots of attitude, and a funky score. The Ohio Players actually did one blaxploitation soundtrack, "Mr. Mean". The most famous blaxploitation movies are "Superfly", "Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song", "Shaft" and "Dolemite". These movies, and a lot of others, have become a cult phenomenon.