- Rare unearthed Funk recordings from the vaults (recordings from 1976) - Featuring musicians from the Funkadelic/Parliament family - First time on vinyl (180g) - Comes with insert/liner notes - Black Vinyl Edition Limited to 500 copies // Melvin Sparks (1946-2011) was a talented American Soul Jazz, Hard Bop, Blues and Funk guitarist. The Texas native picked up a guitar at age 11 and was only 13 when he sat in with B.B. King. As a high school student he first joined Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and then the Upsetters (a touring band formed by Little Richard, which also backed Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye). Sparks and his guitar were very much in demand during the 60ies-70ies and he was featured on sessions by Idris Muhammad, Lonnie Smith, Charles Earland, Ceasar Frazier, Bernard Purdie_and many others. During his career, Mr. Sparks recorded multiple albums for renowned labels such as Prestige, Muse & Savant and worked as a session musician for Blue Note Records. Melvin Sparks' songs were sampled countless times by DJ's and Hip-Hop outfits (including Grandmaster Flash) over the decades. In 1973 Sparks moved into funkier directions and joined the Westbound/Eastbound family where he recorded some of his all-time classics ('Texas Twister' & '75'). A third record with Westbound was planned for 1976 (called I'm Funky Now) but was never released (although a sequenced production master & and a limited number of acetates were produced) because of the major changes that took place in the music industry at that particular time_clubs were suddenly going for DJ's instead of bands and the much loved (but less obvious) genre/scene that Melvin Sparks was part of suddenly fell out of grace. For the I'm Funky Now album Melvin Sparks recorded seven new tracks in Detroit with some of the finest session musicians. Very little is known about the band that backed up Sparks on these recordings, but it's thought that some of the musicians were from the Funkadelic and Parliament family. The producing credit on this album goes to Westbound/Eastbound veteran Bernie Mendelson, known for his work with Houston Person, Donald Austin and Albert Washington.