Brute Force were a soul jazz group formed by brothers Richard and Ted Daniel, who invited childhood friend and free jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock to join the band some time before the recording of their sole album which was released in the summer of 1970. The album, produced and originally released by Herbie Mann, credits Sharrock on three of the seven tracks [a mistake Sepia Tone replicated exactly despite better judgement], while the unmistakable Sharrock can actually be heard on six of the seven songs. The album is an amalgamation of “right on” personal politics-type songs with themes of both alienation and coming together. The band’s soul jazz moves toward the free style of Pharoah Sanders’ psychedelic classics Tauhid, Karma, Izipho-Zam, and Jewels of Thought — perhaps the real reason Sharrock was asked to join in the first place. Except there’s more groove with the tight eight-piece band. Two bass players and Richard Daniel’s Bitches Brew electric piano will fry your ass. An uncredited vocalist (perhaps Stanley Strickland) really lets it out against long hairs on “Some Kind of Approval,” and yodels away on the mind-blowing, 16-minute “Ye-Le-Wa.” Brute Force is an as-yet-undiscovered classic and a boon to Sharrock fans who probably only listened to the three songs the album credits him on.
