In the world of diggers and music collectors, a lot of cats don't seek shine despite of their otherworldly knowledge. Dante Carfagna is one of them. Connoisseurs will associate his name to his Express Rising act launched on Memphix in 2003, others will remember that he unearthed a multitude of lost reels from forgotten studios, later being released on Numero Group, Cali-Tex or Stones Throw Records, to name a few. For the last 30 years and out of civism, Dante's drive relentlessly led him to travel all over the States, trying to reference funk and soul 45s, and more particularly records from the states where he lived. As a prolific writer for various music magazines such as Wax Poetics or Big Daddy Magazine, it was only a matter of time before Dante would publish his first book. At the dawn of the pandemic, he started to work on a large document called Soul Music Of Ohio: An Illustrated Catalog Of Records (Numero Group, 2022), aiming at compiling and presenting hundreds of artists and labels art for historical purpose. Although Dante has been at the root of a number of projects, it would be an understatement to say that he’s of the discreet ilk, happier to present others work than to be at the forefront. It's now time to share the stories he told us.
Jon
Can you tell me where you were born and where your family is originating from?
Dante
I was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1974, to Italian and German parents.
Jon
What was the first record that you purchased with your own allowances?
Dante
It was either Newcleus Jam On Revenge [SUN 4901 / Sunnyview, 1984 -ed] or The Art Of Noise In Visible Silence [BVT 41528 / Chrysalis, 1986 -ed]. Both on cassette, purchased at Gold Circle Mall in Westerville, Ohio.
Jon
What sort of music did you like as a teenager and when did you start collecting, exactly?
Dante
In 1987, I heard two groups that would forever change the way I understood music. One was Public Enemy and the other was Sonic Youth.
My oldest friend Eric Weaver and I were obsessed with rap and would buy every release that even slightly resembled hip-hop. He had bought Yo! Bum Rush The Show on cassette [BCT 40658 / Def Jam Recordings, 1987 -ed] and while we liked it, it wasn’t until we saw the group live in the summer of 1988 on the Nation Of Millions tour [at Ohio Center in Columbus, Ohio on July 24, 1988 -ed] that our teenage minds were officially melted down. Looking back some thirty years later, it truly was a sort of conversion event, where all the music we had heard before seemed so weak and irrelevant. Both of us left that concert completely changed.
Around this same time, I was lent the Sonic Youth record EVOL [SST 059 / SST Records, 1986 -ed] by a Nigerian student at Ohio State named Donald Odita, who worked at my family’s grocery store at the time. Donald was a painter and early mentor of mine, introducing me to a whole raft of weird alternative culture in the form of underground comics and fringe music. I was excited by the music on EVOL, and the next time I went to the record store (probably Magnolia Thunderpussy on High St. [in Columbus, OH ed]), I bought the most current Sonic Youth release, which was Sister [SST 134 / SST Records, 1987 -ed]. I listened to that LP relentlessly. The music had the same power as Public Enemy did, but it spoke a whole different language. The one thing that both groups had in common was an embrace of noise, and I guess my teenage brain was eager for that.
I really loved being in record and comic stores, particularly the used shops, since I was a penniless youth. Just hanging out at local places like Used Kids or Monkey’s Retreat [both in Columbus, OH -ed] was as satisfying as bringing home a 45 or zine. And the other people lurking at these businesses were always a source of some arcane knowledge or general bemusement. Since all the hip-hop from that era was sample-based, I loved the puzzle of trying to figure out the source material. I started to spend any money I had on weird looking 45s and LPs, seeking cool stuff to hear. Since the used, older stuff was cheaper (and abundant), I could get more mileage for my $20 than if I was buying new releases. Before long, I was consumed with getting interesting old records, and that passion continues to this day.
Jon
Circa 1998, Chris Veltri from Groove Merchant in San Francisco mentioned you to Josh. That's how you guys entered in contact and when basically your friendship began. I'm curious to know if it was easy for you as a young man to find other people your age with the same passion as yours? B+ says that both of you are like brothers so that's a hell of a proximity and I believe it's rare in the collector circle where rivalry and secrets are common. Can you tell me about your first encounter with Josh?
Dante
The true genesis of Josh and I meeting actually starts with another Nigerian! My friend Njoroge was living in the Bay Area and mentioned my name and activities to Chris, who then mentioned me to Josh. I don’t think I really even knew Chris that well at the time. Nonetheless, the connection was made and I think Josh gave me a call.
It might be difficult to grasp in 2022, but before the internet it was really hard to find other people that were interested in the same arcane subjects. In regards to the subject that forged our relationship, obscure records, back then knowledge was hard earned and could only be acquired from actual fieldwork. There were no shortcuts. I’m sure Josh and I’s first conversation was just a litany of band and label names neither of us had ever heard before. I’ve always appreciated an equal give and take, as I know Josh does as well, so our relationship was borne naturally out of respect for one another’s knowledge and willingness to share. We soon began trading tapes of funk and soul stuff, a practice we continued for probably twenty years.
And since I know you love the minutiae, on the inner LP sleeves of The Private Press [ILPSD 8118 / Island Records, 2002 -ed] are pictures of tapes from Josh’s collection and the one called Rats Overpower The Cats was one of the many mixes I made in these trades.
Jon
I was told that circa 2008, you and Josh purchased like 400,000 records from a record store in Kansas City that just had shut.
Dante
I first met Josh in person in 1998 in Kansas City, Missouri, where I had gone to college and was then working at one of the largest used record stores in the country, an amazing place called The Music Exchange.
Josh had actually been to the store years earlier in 1993, before we met, on a tour of the US with an Austrian documentary crew shooting something about records [at the time, the late Dave "Funken" Klein was running Hollywood BASIC where Josh released his first tracks, and he had recommended Josh to a lady called Katharina Weingartner. From 1993 to 1994, a series of 5 radio shows called Beatshunting USA were broadcasted on the Austrian Ö3 FM as part of the Radiosendung Musicbox program -ed]. Pretty sure Josh has told me that he stayed in the basement of The Music Exchange pawing through 45s until he passed out from lack of food. It was definitely an overwhelming place. That store was to me what Village Music [closed in 2007 -ed] in Mill Valley was to Josh- a very important part of our lives.
By 1999, I had moved to Chicago, but would make frequent trips back to Kansas City over the following years. In 2006, I was informed that Ron Rooks [1952-2006 -ed], the owner of The Music Exchange and another mentor of mine, had sadly died. Shortly thereafter, his widow approached me about buying the inventory of the store, which at that time was about 300,000 45s and about as many LPs, in addition to the mountain of paper and ephemera that comes with running a record shop for thirty years.
By this time Josh and I were seasoned road warriors, having done many multi-week record exploration trips and bulk buys across the US. One of our earliest extended trips was with Brian Cross (B+) and we spent a couple of weeks in south Florida. Brian was there with us to shoot images for Josh’s upcoming sophomore album, but he’s also a true head and a great road companion, so it was very much not a work trip. All three of us bought a ton of records, back when you could do such things, and met a ton of interesting people.
Some more trivia for you: the photo of Josh from the inside gatefold of The Private Press was taken in an oil puddle in the parking lot of the Swap Shop in Fort Lauderdale, probably while I was off-camera complaining about how bad the records were.
In any case, by the time The Music Exchange offer came along, Josh and I were fairly confident we could handle a massive quantity of 45s (we chose not to deal with the LPs and 12-inches), but neither one of us had dealt with volume like this before. We were definitely learning on the job. We met in a frigid Kansas City in February of 2008 and began the task of packing, palletizing, and freighting the records back to Chicago.
The records were in an unheated warehouse, making for grueling work in the bitter cold, but I have slightly better memories of the ordeal than Josh, whose California blood is not built for such raw winter climes! I think the task took about four days and a great deal of the process was shot on video by a friend of Josh who joined us for that very reason. A full container of goods was eventually delivered to a storage facility in Chicago and over the next year we worked on getting the load down to a manageable size.
Whenever you tackle a large pile of records such as this, invariably most of it is not of any use to you. We managed to unload about 200,000 records in bulk to a dealer in Wisconsin, with the caveat that they were to never return to Illinois. The remaining records were then democratically split between Josh and I, with him taking several trips to Chicago and many long, fun sessions of sorting. I’ve long since worked through my half of the records, but I have no doubt that Josh still has some untouched boxes lurking somewhere in his emerging storage locker empire.
A great deal of Josh and I’s time together has been spent either sorting large piles of records or driving in search of large piles of records. Our relationship is certainly more than just that, but I can’t begin to calculate the amount of miles we’ve driven in the United States in pursuit of stuff. Josh recently reminded me about what we called the “endless summer,” where we spent nearly six weeks in 2003 criss-crossing the Midwest, meeting people, trawling for records, eating badly, and staying in less-than-ideal lodging. We’ve taken many extended trips over the years and they’ve started to blur together for me, but all were unique adventures.
In 2008, we spent two weeks driving from Houston, Texas to Jacksonville, Florida, slow tooling the whole way, stopping in a lot of places along the Gulf Coast. It was on that trip that the tapes from Mickey Rouse’s Lowland Studios in Beaumont, Texas were recovered [and released on Local Customs: Lone Star Lowlands / Numero Group, 2010 -ed], having barely escaped the wrath of Hurricane Ivan a few years before [2004 -ed].
Most of my memories of these trips aren’t even about the records. In Jackson, Mississippi we watched as the contents of the city’s main library were thrown out of windows into dumpsters following a devastating fire. Dining at an upscale restaurant in Mobile, Alabama, where the first thing out of the waitress’ mouth was “There is a SHITLOAD of food on this menu.” Checking into a motel at night in Columbia, South Carolina during a tropical storm, only to find the room occupied by the largest roach either of us has ever encountered. (Sidebar about this roach: I smashed it on the wall with my shoe and put the body into the waste basket in the hotel room. Josh and I were exhausted so we immediately got ready to sleep. We had been asleep for a few hours when I was stirred by the sound of crinkling plastic. I woke up and turned on the light to see this same giant roach climbing back up the same wall, his guts trailing behind him pulling the plastic liner out of the waste basket. Dude was no joke.)
Jon
In 2000, Josh launched his imprint Cali-Tex Records aiming at releasing forgotten funk music. You were doing A&R and I imagine licensing research for Cali-Tex at the time.
Dante
In our pursuit of records, it was inevitable that we would encounter rare or unreleased music that we felt deserved a wider audience. Cali-Tex happened at a time when there weren’t really any US labels doing reissues of obscure soul or funk music, it was mainly done by European labels. This was before a label like Numero Group came into the picture.
There were a few acts that Josh and I were very passionate about, whether it be Mickey & The Soul Generation, J.C. Davis, or Stone Coal White, and our sheer fandom pushed us to want to reissue their music. Whenever you encounter an art that moves you, it’s natural to want to share it. You take the time and dedication to track down the pertinent parties, if only to meet them and hear the story, but often it’s beneficial for all to strike a deal and make the music more widely available. Cali-Tex was never a label concerned with moving units, we knew we were dealing with a niche market, so the sole focus was just getting more ears listening to what we considered great music.
Jon
During the Product Placement Tour on October 28, 2001, you opened for DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist at The Scala in London, England. I'm aware that Josh brought the guests for each venue but again, London is far from Chicago, so how did you end up there that day?
Dante
I was already in the UK, touring around the country with George Mahood, the creator of Big Daddy magazine. At that time, it was completely possible to book gigs across the UK playing funk and soul music at small clubs, and that’s what we were doing when the Product Placement Tour came through. The centerpiece of that Product Placement concept was a 45 called “Milk” by The Basic [released by the American Dairy Association Of Mississippi, year unknown -ed], which I found at The Music Exchange and loaned to Josh and Lucas [Cut Chemist -ed] to use in the mix.
If I’m not mistaken, I also played with them in Manchester [at Planet K, on October 27, 2001 -ed] on that tour. Z-Trip was also on all of those bills and good times were certainly had. A lasting memory of the night in London actually occurred well after the show, during load out. It was a foggy London dawn, something right out of Dickens, and we were behind the venue in a tight old street, the city very quiet. I started to hear this rhythmic beeping coming from afar and as it got closer I realized it was a dude’s cellphone and it was playing some 8-bit version of “Mass Appeal” by Gang Starr. And that was my introduction to the concept of the ringtone.
Jon
In 2004, 2005 and 2008, Josh, Keb Darge and you toured Japan for Deep Funk Tour shows which is Keb's marque de fabrique. Can you tell me more about those events?
Dante
Those were extremely fun times. I don’t know whose idea it was to put those trips together, but it was great synergy and we played some awesome records to a very enthusiastic Japanese audience. I had never met Keb before, he was a friend of Josh’s from his Mo Wax days in England. Keb was a former Northern soulie who had started to play funk and his early compilations were important in spreading this obscure sound to a wider audience. Keb is also a very amplified person, where Josh is pretty reserved, and I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle, so there was a good energy.
Some of the hardest I’ve laughed in my entire life was on those Japan trips. On one occasion in Osaka there was some kind of mix-up regarding the venue and the show was moved to another club. We ended up at a giant Euro dance spot, kind of the wrong location for our vibe. It was around Halloween, and the Japanese go hard with the Halloween shit, and someone (probably Josh) bought this really stupid kind of body thong get-up for laughs. We somehow convinced Keb to put this thing on at this dance venue and walk on stage. We were in physical pain from the laughter. Crowd was unmoved, clearly uninterested. I think Josh played Carleen And The Groovers, I played a 12-inch of “Stay Fly” by Three Six Mafia I had bought that same day, and we bounced. One of our only shitty gigs, but the deep laughs more than made up for it.
Jon
In 2010, Josh launched the Shadow Radio on his website for which you had provided a 1h mix called "Up On A Downer". I remember that it's mostly folk music and a bit of soul. Did he give you carte blanche for the content of the mix?
Dante
I’m sure Josh and I discussed the purpose of Shadow Radio as being not unlike our tape trading hobby, where people that know what they’re doing get to share their stuff, but now with a much larger audience. My mix for the site was pretty much all emotionally-charged, private press folk and rock stuff. The radio function of Josh’s site hosted a bunch of great mixes at that time. Where did those go? I think there was a Bob Abrahamian show, one by private metal guru John Haupt, a bunch by Josh. Lots of weird music played.
Jon
Still in 2010, you and Josh were meant to release a book called See Label For Contents: A Survey of 45 RPM Label Art in America (1955–1980). It should have been published by Wax Poetics but remains shelved ever since. You must have been very close to release it because there even was cover art for it. So what happened to that project and is it still alive?
Dante
The project was intended to be a coffee-table book showcasing alluring label art on American 45s of the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, both Josh and I had some time to dedicate to the project, but a variety of factors led to us abandoning the book. Like many publishers do, Wax Poetics mocked some cover art in order to put it on their release calendar, so many people thought it might eventually be released. We got as far as assembling a few thematic chapters and choosing candidate labels for inclusion, but I would consider the work indefinitely shelved.
Jon
Can you tell me more about your recent publication Soul Music Of Ohio: An Illustrated Catalog Of Records (Numero Group, 2022)?
Dante
The Ohio book represents nearly thirty years of collecting and researching Black music from that state. Much of my collecting habits are driven by civic interest, and I actively collect music from states I have lived in. I have sections in my collection for releases from Missouri, Illinois, and Florida, but Ohio has always been my passion and first priority. I spent a great deal of my 20s and 30s roaming the state of Ohio, tracking down records and artists, trying to learn all I could about this surprisingly prolific musical area. For a short time around 2005-6, I had a website called Ohio Soul Recordings, which was a primitive version of what is now the Soul Music Of Ohio publication. In the last few years, any new incoming Ohio data had slowed to a crawl, which moved me to begin to formulate a way to present in book form all of the assets and information I had gathered. At the beginning of the pandemic I sat down with a great designer and friend of mine named Tim Breen and we mapped out the general architecture of the book. The work is, as the title implies, an illustrated discography, and there is zero editorial anywhere in the book. I offered the information without commentary because no one wants to hear another so-called expert pontificating on anything at this point, myself included. While the book is heavy on discographical minutiae, there are huge sections dedicated to label images, band photos, and period ephemera, so even non-record collectors might find something within the pages to interest them. I hope the book finds a place with other large-scale ethnographies of Ohio, musical or otherwise.
Upon its publication earlier this year, I started work on the next installment in the series, which will focus on the state of Illinois. Obviously Chicago is where nearly 90% of the music was generated in the state, but I want to keep the series theme in place, so it will be titled Soul Music Of Illinois. Compared to the Ohio book, which is about 350 pages, the Illinois volume is shaping up to be nearly three times as large. It’s impossible to overstate how prolific Chicago was during the era of 1960 to 1990. I keep discographies for nearly every state and the pure numbers would indicate that Chicago has more independent soul records than any other place, California, Michigan, and Texas included. Detroit is definitely giving Chicago a run for its money as far as local soul releases, but the numbers favor Chicago because historically it’s always had a larger population.
Jon
Do you plan to release it in 3 volumes, maybe?
Dante
We’ve yet to consider the final presentation, but it will likely be two large volumes, housed in some sort of slipcase. Given the manufacture, it will probably weigh in at almost ten pounds. It will be a lot of book.
Jon
It's crazy to think that Chicago released so much music compared to the rest of the USA, how do you explain that?
Dante
There’s been much ink dedicated to the sociological factors that contributed to the phenomenon. The standard boilerplate explanation is that during and after Reconstruction, a huge number of African-Americans ventured to northern cities from the rural south, seeking jobs and opportunity. Chicago has always been a center of industry, and being the largest metropolis in the Midwest, tens of thousands of folks wound up here in the first-half of the twentieth century. And with the people came their art, musical or otherwise.
What’s usually considered the first significant Black-owned record label, Black Patti, was started here in the 1920s by Mayo Williams. There was also Meritt in Kansas City, but over the years Black Patti has emerged as the beacon of early Black musical entrepreneurship. This kind of empowerment was not overlooked by fellow Chicagoans at the time. Another interesting facet of what is called the Great Migration is that most Mississippians landed in Chicago, while a great deal of Alabamans ended up in Michigan and Ohio. And this can all be explained by the railroad system in the US at the time. It’s much easier and cheaper to take a single train north to the end of the line than transfer to another train and then head east or west.
Jon
I assume that you tried to trace most artists mentioned in those books and where probably many have already passed away. So how do you deal with that part where very little is known about a band or an individual, and at the end nothing can be found because memories have been wiped?
Dante
I certainly made no attempt to contact every artist included in these books, that would be a fool’s errand. Often the physical vinyl record is the only information that survives, and that’s the data I want to preserve and present in a clear way. The evidence on these physical objects is usually more reliable than a human’s memory. You can look at a record and see where it was manufactured and determine a definitive release date. This sometimes conflicts with an artist’s recollection, but the date of the object’s physical creation is fairly indisputable.
And not to sound jaded, but having met untold numbers of musicians and bands, nearly everyone has the same basic story of “We had a talented band in high-school, got some gigs, went on the road, had some interest, nothing happened.” Even bands that made remarkable, enduring music will have some form of this same story.
Jon
You're a big James Brown fan, and apparently you have completed getting every single record that he had ever worked on! James Brown had so many records out, so how do you know that you're through?
Dante
My goal was to collect every domestically released single by James Brown as a solo artist and also every 45 where he is credited with producing.
In order to see what is out there, you have to build a master list or discography of the releases. Thankfully there has been much scholarship on the subject of James Brown, so assembling such a list was not a herculean task. There are certainly people more knowledgeable than me on the finer points of JB’s recording career, a person like Alan Leeds for example, but I just wanted to see if all the 45s could be assembled. Undoubtedly there are others out there that have attempted to do the same thing. Pretty confident that I’m about 99% complete, everything close to mint and in a company sleeve, with only a few test pressings and some non-commercial releases eluding me.
Given the immensity of James Brown’s influence and stature, you’d think it would be thousands of records, but it’s really not that many releases. There are two hundred or so singles under James Brown’s own name and around three hundred of his productions. And almost all of them are good!
I always contend that James is still underrated in the grand scheme of things. Every six months there’s some new Beatles footage unearthed and presented to the world, while the JB legacy, as important and nearly as photographed as the Fab Four, goes largely ignored. This is no slight against the Beatles, it’s just strange to me that one of the two main architects of modern music rarely gets his due. Blame it on the internet and algorithm culture, where now a kid looking for funk is more likely to stumble upon Third Guitar or some other rare shit before they ever encounter Cold Sweat or There Was A Time [both credited to James Brown & The Famous Flames, 45-6110 & 45-6144 / King Records, 1967 respectively -ed].
Jon
I'm surprised that you and Josh have not released more music together. The most recent example I can think of was your Express Rising remix of “Sad and Lonely” [SAD-001 / DJ Shadow self-released, 2011 -ed], so I wondered if there are other mutual remixes in the wild that we don't know about and if you plan to work together again, music-wise?
Dante
Hard to believe that work came out eleven years ago. If I recall correctly, Josh was pretty much done with The Less You Know, The Better [2774212 / Island Records, 2011 -ed] album but Josh wanted some kind of coda or sonic exhale to close the record.
At the time I actually had recording gear set up in my apartment, so it was possible to make something when he asked for my help. I go through long periods where I don’t even consider making music, I won’t have gear in place, my creative urges going towards other activities like painting or drawing. So he sent me the stems for “Sad And Lonely” and I managed to create something resembling what he asked for. I rearranged the piano segments, had a friend add her viola, and inserted some really deep 808 hits. Right when the record came out, Josh was on [the Shadowsphere -ed] tour and was closing his sets with the remix. I remember watching a YouTube clip someone had shot from the crowd at one of the shows and when the bass dropped on the remix, it was palpable from the audience reaction how much boom it really had.
Josh and I haven’t really made that much music in tandem. Most of our conference on each other’s music comes before and after the actual creation of the work. Josh will mention things he wants to accomplish with a certain song, he’ll bounce things off me and I’ll try and make some suggestions. A good example of this is Christina Carter’s appearance on The Outsider [1704960 / Island Records, 2006 -ed]. Josh said he was looking for unique vocalists, and I suggested Ms. Carter since I’ve always loved her voice and her work with Charalambides. I do not know Christina, but at my urging Josh looked into her and things worked out. I never thought I’d see the day where the same record had appearances by both Christina Carter [on “What Have I Done” -ed] and Turf Talk [on “3 Freaks” -ed]!
Similarly, most of Josh’s assistance with my own music comes either before or after it’s been made. I’m not a technical guy, I don’t really give a shit about gear or whatever the hot new toy is. Josh has to stay on top of these types of things since he is an active, modern musician, so he’s always been a great help when I need some technical support.
When I was putting together the second Express Rising LP [self-titled and self-released in 2013 -ed], all of the music had been made on a 4-track cassette, and I wanted to get it into the digital realm in order to arrange and mix it. Josh found some time to fly to Chicago with his computer and some other gear to help me accomplish this. I would have never been able to do that without him. The same sort of scenario was the case for my third LP [Fixed Rope, self-released in 2015 -ed], but rather than come to Chicago, I flew to the Bay with an arcane Akai MG1214 half-inch machine in tow. I had made all the music on this oddball, proprietary 12-track and it was no small feat getting that material into the digital realm. Thankfully, Josh’s good friend, the engineer Mikael Eldridge (Count) [Count also worked on most of Shadow’s productions since 2008], was able to help us. After we had transferred the tracks to ProTools, I spent a week in Josh’s studio mixing and editing the record, with Josh offering helpful suggestions but largely staying out of any aesthetic decision-making. I think we both trust each other’s particular vision enough, so the need never arises for either one of us to question the motives behind our individual musical output.
Jon
Are you working on new music or other projects for the future?
Dante
I don’t have any urge to make new music at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, all my creative energy has been put towards making paintings and drawings. I’m sure the music will beckon again at some point, but right now it’s not a priority. My ultimate goal with Express Rising was to make four albums, each representing a season of the year, and I was somehow able to accomplish that. And it only took me fifteen years!
Dante's publication Soul Music Of Ohio: An Illustrated Catalog Of Records can be purchased through Numero Group, and a large number of his mixes can be listened to at Dogpatch.
We want to thank Dante, JD, Brian Cross (B+) and Dave (The DJ Shadow Collection) for their photos. Additional photos from personal archives and online sources.
-----
Interview made by Jon, September 2022