Timothy McNealy - Funky Movement (2017) [Hi-Res]

Dallas, Texas funk and soul singer, songwriter, producer and firebrand Timothy McNealy’s “Sagittarius Black” 45 was one of the first key “deep funk” records of the genre’s re-discovery period in the mid- to late-‘90s, when collectors and DJ’s did with the black America’s fertile late-‘60s and early ‘70s musical scenes what they had done prior with blues, jazz and rock. When that rarity was first rediscovered, no one could really explain it’s genesis: It was that rare thing, a record that came out of a specific era, but transcended it. Those who were entranced knew now how much McNealy had recorded, how many records he’d issued on his self-funded Shawn Records, or how good his music might be.

With this anthology – the first time that McNealy’s work has been collected and officially reissued – we now know the answer, and we know that McNealy’s music deserves to be emblematic of Dallas funk and soul in the same way that Texas’s other two largest cities – Houston, with the Kashmere Stage Band, and San Antonio, with Mickey and the Soul Generation – have their unique ambassadors, colored by those cities’ milieus.

McNealy’s recordings offer the breadth and depth that make a case for important idiosyncrasies, as they showcase a singular musical vision and his city’s vast talent, which has been prior documented on Now-Again releases such as Cold Heat and the South Dallas Pop Fest 1970 and Jazzman Records’ Texas Funk. McNealy’s banner recordings for Dallas, Texas’s best and brightest in that wonderful moment for American funk and soul music is worthy as an album, and as a testament to what is great about American music in general, and its creators’ abilities to think beyond the immediate.