For those of us who weren't there but think we know our sh*t, it's tempting to (erroneously) assume - between the Octopus, UBB, and Super Disco Breaks comps - that we know everything everyone was playing at jams back in the original school era. The more I get into it, though, the more impressed I am with how deep those dudes regularly got with theirs - way before so-called "beat digging" as a post-1990 practice came into being. When this monster anthology of live tapes came out a few years back I was admittedly kind of pleasantly shocked (tho I really shouldn't have been) when I heard Jazzy Jay doubling up on S.O.U.L.'s "Soul" at a Zulu Nation park jam from 1979(!). (And all this time I thought Frankie from Soul Kitchen was the man for playing it right after Done By the Forces of Nature dropped. Well, Frankie's still the man. But like I've said before, the pioneers were pioneers for a reason.)
Anyways, the above Arthur Prysock 12 is not elusive by any means. It's probably sitting in the cheap bin at every record shop downtown as I type this. Maybe that's why no one ever bothered to put it on a comp. But it is apparently an unheralded favorite of those from the OG BX era, and with good reason. The song itself is not something you'd ever play in full, but the break towards the end is great. I just dig the way it comes in - the orchestra hit, the way the strings hang on for an extra bar. If you happen to have the good fortune to be playing this when Jazzy Jay is nearby (even if he's outside smoking a cigarette), be prepared for him to Spidey sense that the record is on, and involuntarily jump behind the turntables to take over. Such is the power of Beat Arthur.
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