RIP Benny Gordon

Benny Gordon & The Soul Brothers - Give a Damn (About Your Fellow Man)

I hate it when RIP posts start springing up throughout the soul blogosphere, but I have learned from my man Red Kelly that Benny Gordon passed away on Christmas Eve. I'll defer to Red's blog for more info about Gordon and will simply post a tune I'd been intending to feature for awhile anyway. The funk favorite "Give a Dam" is a stone groover from the get-go, with Gordon kicking things off with a James Brown-ish grunt and then pushing through the awesome call-and-response message song, summoning a little Edwin Starr along the way. "War! Stop the war somebody, please ... I ask ya what's it for ... I tell ya it's a shame, when you have to kill a man, Lord, and you don't know his name." Powerful stuff indeed! RIP Benny.