Curtis first proposed to bring The Fatback Band to Australia decades ago. However, as far as he’s concerned the reason for the band’s conspicuous nonappearance is our fault. “People ask me, ‘Why haven’t you been down before?’ Well no one never asked me.
“Put it this way, my group is not one of the popular groups. People think [The Fatback Band] is a popular group, but it is not a popular group. In other words, we are kind of like an underground group. We’re not one of those big headliner groups.”
It’s true, The Fatback Band never became commercial giants, but they’re still a very historically significant band. They’re known for the introducing the New Orleans fatback jazz beat into the world of funk; they’re touted as one of the first major disco acts; and Curtis and co. were behind the first commercially released hip hop song, 1979’s King Tim III (Personality Jock). Over a 45-year career they’ve unleashed dozens of albums, and an increasing number of listeners across the globe now recognise The Fatback Band’s resounding influence. For Curtis, though, it’s been a hard slog.
“Put it this way, every once in a while history gets it right,” he says. “Like, ‘Fatback did this and Fatback was the first at this.’ But more of the time we don’t get no respect. And it doesn’t bother me now, because I know what we’re doing and I love playing music. So people ask me, ‘Bill, you’re still playing?’ ‘Yeah. I don’t know nothing else to do’.”
Although Curtis has been holding down the groove with The Fatback Band for 40-plus years, the remainder of the band’s personnel has been through a series of changes. This means the nature of Curtis’ onstage experience continues to differ.
“I’m still excited every time I go onstage. I’m still nervous when I go onstage until I hit the first note,” he says. “Over the years I’ve had four different Fatback groups – four different personnel. The rhythm section always stayed the same, so therefore it made everything right. But now this is my fifth group that I just put together this year and we’re still in that transition. So that’s why I say I’m a little nervous, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I put them onstage. They’re a young crew – everybody’s in their late-30s and maybe early-40s. So they’re young compared to me and they play and they’re ready to go, but it makes me a little nervous because I don’t know what the hell they gonna do.”
For some bands it’d be impossible to endure such extensive personnel changes and still exist as the same band. But despite Curtis’ nerves about his current band’s onstage behaviour, the subsistence of The Fatback Band has never come under threat.
“I always try to get likeminded people that think like I think,” he says. “I try to find those musicians that are into that type of music – funk music. I don’t go out there and get a guy who’s not funky. And one of the things that’s helped keep Fatback’s sound, most the young musicians that are coming along were raised up on Fatback. So I picked up a young musician in his 40s and he wanted to be a bass player – the bassist that inspired him was a Fatback bass player. Most the musicians was inspired by Fatback Band, because Fatback music sounds very easy to play and it’s very simple and you can understand it. You can feel Fatback music – it’s earthy.”
There is a distinctive The Fatback Band sound – it’s there on 1975’s funk jam (Are You Ready) Do The Bus Stop, 1980’s smooth disco tune Backstrokin’, and 1984’s electro-funk number I Found Lovin’. However, it’s not as though Curtis has musical tunnel vision. This year saw the release of the singles Get Your Head Out Your Phone and Don’t Leave Me Now, both of which are credited to Bill Curtis & Friends with The Fatback Band.
“Today I don’t record under The Fatback Band. The reason I do record that way is because I don’t want to be locked in with the Fatback sound. I don’t want, when I put out music, that I have to put it out to sound like Fatback. [Music is] a work in progress, about evolution, changing – that’s what I want to be.
“If you’re a real Fatback follower, you know that all our music changed every album. It’s a new sound coming in, but people can still tell it’s Fatback. Today when I make music, if I’m making it you’re going to hear elements of Fatback in there because it’s in me. If you give me the Star Spangled Banner and tell me to play it, it’s going to have Fatback feeling in it.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
