Street Walking Cheetah

Donald Byrd - Street Lady (1973)

This is some seriously superior summer jamming courtesy of Mr. Donald Byrd. Who apparently never really dug the cover of this album very much. Guess he didn't think the woman was attractive enough. Seems accurate to me. But what do I know - most of the prostitutes I've seen look like something from a Basil Wolverton drawing. But I digress - every time this track bubbles up, I am completely taken into this realm of easy living (which possibly involves roller skating) and I end up conjuring up all of these scenarios that never really happened. It's like, (to self) "hey, remember when you cruised on up to the hamburger stand after midnight and that waitress rolled over to the window and was like, 'you guys are back again, huh?' And this song was playing in the background and summer never felt so good and alive?" Well, that didn't even happen but it doesn't matter because if music can't help you rewrite the past, then what good is anything. True, I did used to rollerskate a lot, but usually it was to the tune of Van Halen's "Jump" or that Debbie Deb track that goes "Look out weekend, cuz here I come...because weekends were made for fun" But yeah, Donald Byrd and his top notch bomb squad in the form of the Mizell brothers really break things down in this tune.

Lansana's Priestess