Funky Friday – Episode 83: The Land Of Funk
- Noah McDonough
- 6 days ago
- 12 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
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🎧 Listen live on KDOG 9 AM Pacific Time→ Here
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• 9 AM KDOG
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🎶 Catch the Replay → Here
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Airdate: 9.4.26 - 9 AM Pacific Time on KDOG & 9 PM Pacific Time on KCSM HD2
Funky Friday – Episode 83: The Land Of Funk
Happy Friday and welcome to Funky Friday Episode 83: The Land of Funk
Dayton built things.
Cash registers. Cars. Airplanes.
At one point, this Ohio city was known as the City of a Thousand Factories.
But somewhere between the factories, school band rooms, neighborhood garages, and clubs, Dayton started building something else.
Funk bands.
A remarkable number of them.
Ohio Players. Slave. Lakeside. Zapp. Faze-O. Sun. Aurra. Steve Arrington.
Different bands. Different sounds. One relatively small Midwestern city.
So the question behind The Land of Funk is simple:
Why Dayton?
Part of the answer begins with the city itself.
During the middle of the 20th century, Dayton was an industrial powerhouse. Companies like National Cash Register and General Motors provided thousands of jobs, while Wright-Patterson Air Force Base contributed to a growing regional economy.
African American families arriving from the Jim Crow South brought musical traditions with them.
Blues.
Gospel.
Jazz.
R&B.
At the same time, Dayton's public schools invested heavily in music education. Students had access to instruments, teachers, marching bands, talent shows, and opportunities to learn how to play.
Then they went home and formed bands.
Garage bands seemed to be everywhere. Young musicians competed in talent shows and Battles of the Bands. Players met other players. Bands shared stages. Musicians moved between groups.
And eventually, some of those neighborhood bands started making songs the entire country heard.
At the front of the charge were the Ohio Players.
Their success helped open the door for another generation of Dayton musicians, and by the 1970s the city had developed one of the most extraordinary concentrations of funk bands anywhere in America.
But there wasn't one single Dayton sound.
Some bands leaned heavily into horns and guitars. Others built around enormous bass grooves. As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, synthesizers, electronics, and new production techniques began changing the music again.
What connected these musicians wasn't necessarily how they sounded.
It was where they came from.
The same schools.
The same neighborhoods.
The same clubs.
The same musical community.
You can hear those connections throughout this episode.
Ohio Players helped blaze the trail. Faze-O followed in their orbit. Slave produced another branch of the Dayton family tree that eventually included Aurra and Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame.
And then there were the Troutman brothers.
With Zapp, Roger Troutman took Dayton funk somewhere new.
The talk box became a lead voice. Synthesizers joined the bass and drums. The sound became increasingly electronic without surrendering the groove underneath it.
And just like the Ohio Players had helped point the way for the Dayton bands that followed them, Roger's sound would travel far beyond Ohio.
You can hear its descendants throughout hip-hop, sampling culture, and especially the G-funk that emerged from the West Coast years later.
But the story of Dayton funk is also the story of what happened to the city that created it.
Factories closed.
Industrial jobs disappeared.
School budgets tightened.
Music programs were cut.
And the economics of keeping large bands on the road became increasingly difficult.
The ecosystem that had put instruments into kids' hands and helped turn neighborhood musicians into internationally successful bands began to disappear.
The music didn't.
More than half a century later, those Dayton grooves are still being played, sampled, rediscovered, and passed to another generation.
So this week, Funky Friday is headed to an unlikely funk capital on the banks of the Great Miami River.
A city of inventors.
A city of factories.
A city of musicians.
Welcome to Dayton, Ohio.
Welcome to The Land of Funk.
Signal Discovery
This week’s Signal Discovery stays right here in Dayton.
Funk: The Sound of Dayton is a short documentary exploring the city’s extraordinary musical legacy through the people who lived it.
Musicians, historians, educators, and members of the community trace the rise of Dayton funk, its impact far beyond Ohio, and what happened as the infrastructure that once supported a city full of working bands began to disappear.
But this isn't just a story about the past.
It's also about a city reclaiming its musical identity and a new generation working to keep that legacy alive.
Because Dayton didn't just produce some great funk songs.
It produced a culture.
I’m Noah McDonough.
Welcome to Dayton.
Welcome to The Land of Funk.
Funky Friday – Episode 83: The Land Of Funk
🔥 SETLIST + RENEGADE NOTES
Heatwave - “The Groove Line (Special Disco Version)”
Personnel: Johnnie Wilder Jr. - vocals, backing vocals, congas; Keith Wilder - vocals; Rod Temperton - keyboards, synthesizers; Mario Mantese - bass; Eric Johns - guitars; Ernest “Bilbo” Berger - drums, timbales; Roy Carter - guitar, keyboards; Frank Ricotti and Tristan Fry - percussion. Written by Rod Temperton; produced by Barry Blue.
Renegade Note: Heatwave provides an unusual branch of the Dayton family tree. Brothers Johnnie and Keith Wilder were Dayton natives, but Johnnie's military service took him to Germany, where he began performing after leaving the Army. He eventually relocated to England and connected with keyboardist and songwriter Rod Temperton, creating a genuinely international band around two musicians from Dayton. “The Groove Line,” from 1978's Central Heating, became a major crossover hit, reaching No. 3 on Billboard's R&B chart and No. 7 on the Hot 100. Dayton funk had traveled a very long way from Ohio.
Ohio Players - “Jive Turkey”
Personnel: Leroy “Sugarfoot” Bonner - vocals; Clarence Satchell - saxophones, vocals; Marshall “Rock” Jones - bass; James “Diamond” Williams - drums, congas, vocals; Billy Beck - Hammond organ, keyboards, vocals; Ralph “Pee Wee” Middlebrooks; Marvin “Merv” Pierce; Clarence Willis - vocals; Robert Jones - congas. Produced by the Ohio Players.
Renegade Note: Before Dayton became crowded with nationally known funk bands, the Ohio Players helped kick open the door. “Jive Turkey” appeared on 1974's Skin Tight, the group's first album for Mercury and the beginning of the commercial run that would make them Dayton's first funk superstars. Rather than reaching for “Fire” or “Love Rollercoaster,” we're digging deeper into that breakthrough period with seven minutes of the Players doing what Dayton bands did particularly well: locking into a groove and refusing to let go. The documentary Funk: The Sound of Dayton describes the Ohio Players as the band that “opened the floodgates” for the groups that followed.
Faze-O - “Funky Reputation”
Personnel: Ralph “Love” Aikens - guitar, vocals, talk box; Tyrone “Flye” Crum - bass, backing vocals; Keith “Chop Chop” Harrison - keyboards, electric piano, synthesizer, percussion, vocals; Roger “Dodger” Parker - drums, percussion; Robert “Bip” Neal Jr. - percussion, vocals; Robert “C.D.” Jones - congas; Bobby Lewis, Jack Kramer and Paul Serrano - trumpet. Arranged by the Ohio Players; produced by Tight Corporation.
Renegade Note: Here's the Ohio Players' influence becoming another Dayton band. Faze-O's 1977 debut Riding High was produced by the Ohio Players, and “Funky Reputation” carries the connection even further: its writing credits belong to members of the Ohio Players themselves. Faze-O may be best remembered for the smoother title track, but “Funky Reputation” gives us the harder side of the band and illustrates how Dayton's scene reproduced itself—not simply through influence, but through musicians actively helping other local musicians get their sound onto an album.
Sun - “Wanna Make Love (Come Flick My Bic)”
Personnel: Byron Byrd - bandleader, multi-instrumentalist; Roger Troutman - guitar, talk box; Lester Troutman - drums; additional instrumentation by Sun. Written by Byron Byrd; produced and arranged by Beau Ray Fleming and Byron Byrd.
Renegade Note: Sun grew directly out of the Dayton environment we're exploring. Founder Byron Byrd played saxophone at Dayton's Roosevelt High School before developing into a multi-instrumentalist and bandleader. When Sun needed help completing the rhythm section for its first Capitol album, Byrd brought in another pair of Dayton musicians: Roger and Lester Troutman. Roger contributed guitar and his emerging talk-box sound to “Wanna Make Love,” giving us an early appearance by the musician who would soon make that device synonymous with Dayton funk. Released in 1976, the song became Sun's first hit.
Aurra - “Are You Single? (12" Mix)”
Personnel: Starleana Young - vocals, percussion; Curt Jones - vocals, guitar, percussion; Steve Washington - drums, percussion, guitar, keyboards, trumpet; Charles Carter - keyboards, tenor saxophone, flute, percussion, vocals; Buddy Hankerson - bass; with additional Aurra musicians. Written by Starleana Taylor, George Jones, Phillip Field, Stephen Washington and Jennifer Ivory.
Renegade Note: Aurra demonstrates how interconnected the Dayton scene had become. The group emerged as an offshoot of Slave, conceived by Slave co-founder Steve Washington and initially populated by musicians from the Slave family. Curt Jones and Starleana Young had also been part of Slave's touring organization. That lineage is audible on “Are You Single?”—particularly in the bass-heavy rhythmic attack—but Aurra pushes the sound into the increasingly polished early 1980s. The song reached the R&B Top 20 in 1981, showing that Dayton's second generation could build on what Slave had created without simply duplicating it.
Slave - “Slide”
Personnel: Danny Webster - lead vocals; Tom Dozier - lead vocals; Mark Adams - bass; Mark Hicks - guitar; Steve Washington - percussion; Floyd Miller - trombone; Orion Wilhoite - alto saxophone; Tom Lockett Jr. - alto saxophone; Carter Bradley - keyboards. Produced by Jeff Dixon.
Renegade Note: If the Ohio Players opened the floodgates, Slave proved there was much more coming behind them. Formed in Dayton, the band's 1977 debut single “Slide” went all the way to No. 1 on Billboard's R&B chart. At the center is Mark Adams' enormous bass sound, surrounded by guitar, horns, percussion and keyboards from a band that could hit with remarkable precision. Slave would eventually generate its own musical family tree, leading directly to Aurra and Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame. In Dayton, one successful band didn't necessarily end a story. Sometimes it started several more.
Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame - “Weak at the Knees”
Personnel: Steve Arrington - lead vocals, drums, keyboards, bass, backing vocals; Buddy Hankerson - bass, backing vocals; Charles Carter - saxophone, keyboards, backing vocals; Roger Parker - drums, backing vocals; Sam Carter - keyboards, additional vocals; Bruce Victor Godsey - keyboards, flute, backing vocals; Gary Jackson - percussion, backing vocals; Kevin Eubanks - bass. Produced by Steve Arrington, Charles Carter and Jimmy Douglass.
Renegade Note: Steve Arrington entered Slave as a drummer before unexpectedly becoming one of the group's defining voices. After leaving Slave, he carried that Dayton lineage into Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame. “Weak at the Knees,” released in 1983, strips the sound into an elastic early-'80s groove built around rhythm, repetition and Arrington's unmistakable vocal delivery. Its afterlife became enormous: generations of hip-hop artists discovered Arrington's music through sampling, helping carry another piece of Dayton's musical vocabulary into an entirely different era.
Roger - “So Ruff, So Tuff”
Personnel: Roger Troutman - keyboards, vocals, arranger; Larry Troutman - congas; Carl Cowan - horn; Bobby Glover, Delores Smith, Dick Smith, Greg Jackson, Janetta Boyce, Marchelle Smith and Zapp - backing vocals. Written by Roger Troutman and Larry Troutman.
Renegade Note: By the beginning of the 1980s, Roger Troutman had become one of Dayton's most distinctive musical voices—even when that “voice” was coming through a talk box. “So Ruff, So Tuff,” from Roger's 1981 solo debut The Many Facets of Roger, makes an important distinction in our Dayton story: Zapp and Roger were closely intertwined, but Roger was also developing an identity as a producer, arranger and solo artist. The technology was changing. The bands were getting leaner. But underneath the electronics, Dayton's obsession with the groove remained intact.
Zapp - “More Bounce to the Ounce”
Personnel: Roger Troutman - bass, guitar, keyboards, harmonica, talk box, vocals; Larry Troutman - congas, percussion; Lester Troutman - drums, percussion; Terry Troutman - bass, vocals; Gregory Jackson - keyboards, vocals; Carl Cowen - saxophone; Bobby Glover - vocals; Bootsy Collins - guitar. Written by Roger Troutman; produced by Roger Troutman and Bootsy Collins.
Renegade Note: Here the Dayton story collides with another Ohio funk family. Roger and the Troutman brothers were friends with Cincinnati's Bootsy and Catfish Collins, and that relationship helped bring Zapp to Detroit's United Sound Studios. There, Roger developed “More Bounce to the Ounce”; George Clinton encouraged the group to take the song to Warner Bros., and Zapp suddenly had a major-label deal. Released in 1980, “More Bounce” reached No. 2 on Billboard's R&B chart. Roger's talk box, synthesizers and electronically processed sound provided Dayton funk with a new vocabulary—one that would become enormously influential on the hip-hop and G-funk generations that followed.
Lakeside - “Fantastic Voyage”
Personnel: Tiemeyer McCain - lead and backing vocals; Thomas Shelby - lead and backing vocals, percussion; Stephen Shockley - vocals, synthesizers, guitars; Otis Stokes - vocals, electric piano, clavinet, synthesizer, guitars, bass; Norman Beavers - piano, electric piano, clavinet, synthesizers; Mark Adam Wood Jr. - vocals, keyboards, percussion; Fred Lewis - synth bass, congas, timbales, percussion; Marvin Craig - bass, percussion; Fred Alexander Jr. - drums, percussion. Produced and arranged by Lakeside; executive producer Dick Griffey.
Renegade Note: We end with one of Dayton funk's great celebrations. Lakeside had roots stretching back to high-school groups in the Dayton area, part of the same culture of young musicians forming bands that helped make the city extraordinary. By 1980, they were established members of Dick Griffey's Solar Records roster, and Fantastic Voyage became their defining album. The title song turns the band's enormous lineup into a six-minute invitation to leave everything behind and climb aboard. Decades later, Coolio would introduce another generation to that voyage, but the ship launched here: a self-contained Dayton band playing, arranging and producing its own funk.
🔗 Quick Links:
🎧 Listen live on KDOG 9 AM Pacific Time→ Here
🎧 Listen live on KCSM HD2 9 PM Pacific Time→ Here
📆 Add to Calendar — Funky Friday (Weekly):
• 9 AM KDOG
Add to Google Calendar
• 9 PM KCSM HD2
Add to Google Calendar
🎶 Catch the Replay → Here
📖 Full Episode Recaps + Setlists → Here
📻 Renegade Radio Site → Here
Funk Facts
HEATWAVE - The Groove Line (Special Disco Version)
Built around a propulsive bass-and-drum foundation, clipped rhythm guitar, keyboards, synthesizers, percussion, and tightly layered vocals. Rod Temperton’s writing continually cycles short rhythmic figures against one another, creating forward motion without requiring major harmonic changes. The extended version gives the groove additional room to breathe, allowing instrumental and vocal elements to drop in and out while the rhythm section remains almost relentlessly locked underneath.
OHIO PLAYERS - Jive Turkey
Built around a thick bass groove, tightly syncopated drums, rhythm guitar, keyboards, percussion, horns, and the Ohio Players’ characteristic mixture of lead vocals, responses, and interjections. Rather than constantly changing the arrangement, “Jive Turkey” settles deeply into its central rhythmic idea and explores variations around it. Small guitar figures, keyboard accents, horn punches, and vocal phrases continually alter the surface while the pocket underneath barely moves.
FAZE-O - Funky Reputation
Driven by a muscular bass line, drums, guitar, keyboards, percussion, horns, and layered vocals. The arrangement emphasizes short, interlocking rhythmic figures rather than long melodic passages, with guitar and keyboards repeatedly answering the rhythm section. The result has the feel of a large funk ensemble operating almost like a single percussion instrument: every player contributes another piece to the groove without crowding the others.
SUN - Wanna Make Love (Come Flick My Bic)
Built around a deep repeating bass figure, crisp drums, rhythm guitar, keyboards, percussion, horns, vocals, and flashes of Roger Troutman’s early talk-box sound. The arrangement balances a relatively straightforward dance groove with constantly shifting instrumental accents. Roger’s processed guitar-and-talk-box textures are especially interesting in retrospect; the electronic voice that would later become central to Zapp is already appearing inside a much more traditional large-band funk arrangement.
AURRA - Are You Single? (12" Mix)
Constructed around an elastic bass line, drum-machine-like precision, rhythm guitar, synthesizers, percussion, and alternating male and female vocals. Compared with the heavier live-band attack of earlier Dayton funk, the arrangement is cleaner and more spacious, with synthesizers increasingly occupying territory once dominated by horns and rhythm guitar. The extended mix uses repetition deliberately, allowing the bass and percussion to become the primary event rather than simply supporting the vocal.
SLAVE - Slide
Built around Mark Adams’ massive bass line, tightly synchronized drums, clipped guitar, keyboards, percussion, horns, and shouted vocals. The bass functions simultaneously as the song’s foundation and its primary hook, repeatedly snapping between low notes and aggressive upper-register figures. Everything surrounding it is remarkably disciplined: guitar scratches, horn attacks, percussion, and vocal interjections leave enough space for the bass to remain enormous. It is a textbook example of funk deriving its power as much from what musicians don't play as what they do.
STEVE ARRINGTON'S HALL OF FAME - Weak at the Knees
Built around a rubbery bass groove, crisp drums, synthesizers, keyboards, percussion, sparse guitar, and Steve Arrington’s highly rhythmic vocal phrasing. By 1983, the enormous horn-and-guitar arrangements associated with much 1970s funk had been substantially reduced. Here, space becomes part of the groove: individual keyboard stabs, bass notes, vocal sounds, and percussion hits appear against an uncluttered rhythmic background, creating a leaner version of the Dayton pocket.
ROGER - So Ruff, So Tuff
Constructed around synthesizer bass, electronic keyboards, drums, percussion, handclaps, backing vocals, and Roger Troutman’s unmistakable talk box. Roger uses the talk box not merely as a novelty effect but as a rhythmic instrument, bending syllables and melodic fragments directly into the groove. The arrangement is comparatively sparse, allowing electronically generated sounds to occupy the spaces once filled by the larger instrumental sections of earlier Dayton bands.
ZAPP - More Bounce to the Ounce
Built around a huge repeating bass figure, drums, handclaps, synthesizers, guitar, keyboards, and layers of Roger Troutman’s talk-box vocals. The arrangement is almost radically committed to repetition: rather than moving through conventional song sections quickly, Zapp allows the central groove to become the composition itself. Roger continually changes the texture around that foundation with electronic voices, keyboard figures, vocal responses, and rhythmic effects. It is Dayton funk being rebuilt for the electronic age.
LAKESIDE - Fantastic Voyage
Built around bass, drums, rhythm guitar, keyboards, synthesizers, percussion, handclaps, layered vocals, and one of funk's great communal choruses. The arrangement continually alternates between tightly controlled verses and increasingly expansive vocal sections, giving the song the feeling of a party growing around the rhythm section. Despite the number of musicians involved, the instrumental parts rarely compete for space; bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion, and vocals interlock around a remarkably stable groove. By the time everyone is invited aboard the ship, the arrangement itself has become the party.
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