Handy Man/ Second Hand Man

From a warehouse find, this is a new, unplayed stock copy. Bobby Rush has been making seriously great funk and soul for several decades (the earliest single I've had was "Chicken Heads" from 1970), but aside from a couple brushes with the charts he's been ignored by mainstream radio. His uncompromising, funky southern soul may not go down well with the smooth, manufactured-sounding funk and soul that's dominated the airwaves since the mid-1980s, but it sure tastes good to me! On the A side (no relation to the "Handy Man" of Jimmy Jones/James Taylor fame), you'll hear a one-liner that's classic male raunch, a la Clarence Carter:\r\n

I don't claim to be a plumber
I'm just a plumber's sun
But I can plug your hole
Until your plumber come.

\r\n

After hearing this, it didn't surprise me to find that the Urgent label was distributed through Ichiban Records, on which Clarence Carter released his famously raunchy single, "Strokin'".