If I could be part of the Tower of Power horns during a live performance of, say, "What Is Hip?," I'd bop my bell up and down, do steps, make hand mimes and die a happy man. I can hear/see it now: a point midway through the tune, when the backbeat takes over. Organist Chester Thompson rides hell out of his bass pedals. Up top, the horn section offers patterned, punchy bursts. So tight! I duck and weave my axe in secret exultation. The capper: it's all going coast-to-coast on TV. Cameras are making rapid-fire cuts to catch our joyous yet cool physicality. Lead singer Edward McGee and frizzy-haired, tuxedoed tenorman Lenny Pickett are dancing in tiny circles, flailing their arms. At some point I levitate slightly.

Like hipness, such felt funk is what it is, and thus resistant to technical explanation. Tower of Power's leader, Emilio Castillo, only likens the horn fills on "Deal with It" (from this LP) to "a big sleek car, like in cartoons, just slippin' down the highway." Still, Tower owns two important trademarks: an uncluttered sound, unlike that of most hit singles, and razor-sharp execution (the horns are well known but the rhythm section is also slicker than slick). In short, they remember precommercial funk as it used to root in clubs, where even young whites (like the ones who eventually formed Tower of Power) could pick up on it. Also, Tower's touch extends to both burners and ballads, encompassing the whole of soul (not disco, kids). But while on past records only cookers (like "Hip") were clear winners, all the cuts on Ain't Nothin' Stoppin' Us Now, an album indicating Tower's growth, place the bittersweet and the popping in subtler combinations. (My only attendant regret: a perhaps resultant absence of Runyonesque lyrics like "The Skunk, the Goose and the Fly" or "It's Not the Crime.") Additionally, McGee, a newcomer, improves their lead-singer slot with a range that's supercontrolled yet powerful even when falsetto.

As Castillo explains it, he and most of the other group members were part of a mass white-love for soul music in Oakland/San Francisco around 1967. "Sly Stone was a disc jockey on KSOL," he remembers. More influentially, though, a white horn band called the Spiders was playing Curtis Mayfield and Gene Chandler tunes at Soul City and the IDES hall. But who showed the Spiders their schtick? Maybe another local white named Jimmy Cicero, but it really doesn't matter; the point is, whichever pale lad first copped black licks'round Hayward must have shared my same funk fantasy. He understood a powerful nexus of all that Caucasian culture isn't—even, as James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, "new standards": "The white man is in sore need of new standards, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again into fruitful communion with the depths of his own being."

All of which brings me to a double-edged sword. Tower's new LP is fervently titled; through five years and six albums with Warner Bros., the group never made the commercial mark they felt they deserved. But was it only a matter of promotion that held them back? Maybe white America wasn't ready for funk's "new standards." Record businessmen certainly weren't: Dyke and the Blazers having died a legend, no other black Tower-type bands have been recorded (though there are scads in every major U.S. city). And successful white horn bands are just not in Tower's bag (I'm not forgetting that now, three of the band's key members are black).

But here's the other edge. Because they are, conceptually, imitators intending the highest form of flattery, Tower now could, with corporate help, do for pure funk what Dave Brubeck did for "progressive" jazz, or what Jimmy Cliff did for reggae—open up some doors. Sure, it's possible to see Tower as yet another example of black culture in more acceptable whiteface (see Soul on Ice). But there is something unique about their outsider's perspective: it's macroscopic. Tributes are often more directly emotional than the bona fide thing; by this logic, the band's peaks are quintessential compilations of all the wonderful things about soul/funk, from James Brown to Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. Ain't Nothin' Stoppin' Us Now is a polished yet grooving album, firmly in line with Tower of Power's long-honed musical slant. How it sells could say a lot about how ready America is for the "new standard" of funk. (RS 225)

MICHAEL ROZEK