Crate Digger's Gold

This is definitely not my parents’ First Edition. I may still have the 8-track somewhere that, among the handful of others secured by my dad for “just one penny” via the Columbia Record and Tape Club, played incessantly on weekend afternoons when my folks would host cook-outs with their neighborhood friends. Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town was, by far, my favorite track and would–for quite some time–remain in my mind “The Gambler’s” best work. And, heck, I’ll even play Something’s Burning on a jukebox whenever I can find it. Now, I doubt my folks had recognized Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) as the First Edition when picking out that 8-track and so I can only assume that the grooviest First Ed they’d ever experienced was on Burning. Hence the first sentence of this review.
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Thumb through random stacks of 45s long enough and you might just come across this surprising b-side to Rufus featuring Chaka Khan’s exquisite down-tempo classic Sweet Thing. Circles is at once an infectiously groovy dance tune, a vocal calling card for the fully-evolved Chaka Khan and possibly Rufus’ (the band’s) creative and recording peak. The single was released in 1975, two years after their masterful debut, Rufus, and yet the band’s best work had, in my humble opinion, already been laid down on wax at the time of its release. While Sweet Thing is an unfolding ‘slow jam’ in the classic sense, Circles pretty much begins and ends with the same vigor and driving pace that makes its just-shy-of four minute length pass all too quickly.
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Dee Jay Art(uro) is diggin' for a livin'

Kenny Rogers and the First Edition – School Teacher (1972)

Rufus featuring Chaka Khan – Circles (1975)