Savage! Soundtrack to the streets and sheets

Don Julian: Savage! and Lay It On Your Head
From: Savage! [Money, 1974]

Some songs are just made for strutting to. The title theme of little seen and long forgotten seventies Blaxploitation film Savage! is just one of those tunes. Over its ten plus minutes of hard as nails funk the track kicks and glides, the percussion and melody daring you not to add a little bit of swagger to your walk. It’s an undoubted highpoint of seventies funk soundtracks and is also a great track to play out for the DJ bathroom break as it never lets up on it’s insatiable desire to make you move.

Lay It On Your Head is, unsurprisingly, less intense than the title song but compares well with Bobbi Humphrey’s seventies output with it’s bass led production offering the foundation for the funky flute playing that holds the track together nicely.

Don Julian actually had a pretty successful career with the soul group the Larks in the sixties and also scored another movie a year earlier titled Shorty The Pimp but I’m at a loss to find anything else in his catalogue quite as intense as his work on Savage! It’s worth noting that the title track was written with Arthur Wright who also scored Dolemite so maybe the two influences together helped raise the bar.

Either way, don’t sleep on this, now reissued for the world to enjoy. Sadly the film shows no sign of turning up anytime soon, it’s not meant to be a lost classic but anything with the tag line “On the streets or on the sheets he’s a savage!” can’t be all bad. Anyone who can shed some light on the movie itself please holler.