Big Soul – A California groove France claimed

From Sunset self-press to Sony France and Le Brio

Big Soul were a California trio who found their biggest audience in France. Caroline Wampole played bass and sang. Kelleth Chinn played guitar. Adam Newman, then Dean Jenkins, held drums. Between 1989 and 1995 they worked clubs from Los Angeles to San Francisco and pressed their own records when majors would not return calls. The story that stuck: a French traveler bought a self-pressed disc on Sunset Boulevard, carried it home, and a DJ at Le Niel’s in Paris dropped “Hippy Hippy Shake” until the floor filled.

The sound was handmade club funk: rough rock guitars, samples cutting through, French phrases left in the songs. They were an American band by passport. France is where the records were first heard in public, on a Paris dancefloor and then in a Sony office.

Big Soul (1995), the debut album, sounded ready for both indie vinyl and major promotion. “Le Brio (Branchez la guitare)” became a national wink: a guitar plugged into a language that was not theirs and somehow fit daytime radio. Sony France heard the club heat, found the band, and treated the record as a summer event while American radio still moved slowly.

“Hippy Hippy Shake” and “Le Brio” landed on video channels and FM playlists. Wampole’s bass moved in short phrases. Chinn’s guitar answered with short, bright lines. The drums left space where other bands filled every bar. The California trio turned up at French festivals and in living rooms that summer.

Love Crazy followed in 1997 with “Julene” and “Pick Up The Telephone,” stretching the palette while keeping a rhythm section that refused to hurry for fashion. Tours made the split concrete: California accents on French stages, French choruses shouted back from the crowd. Television and press treated them as outsiders who fitted summer radio and alternative playlists.

Later came soundtrack work for Hors Service (2001) and the compilation Funky Beats (2002). The recording years were short, and the dance records stayed in circulation. The catalogue still circulates among listeners who remember when “branchez la guitare” was both an instruction and a joke. Reissues and streaming playlists have kept the trio visible to listeners who never saw a Sunset self-press but still respond to a bassline built for movement.

Influences sit in the mix if you listen: West Coast funk, rock guitar bite, sample culture of the early 90s, and the European appetite for groove with a foreign accent. Big Soul did not chase grunge or Britpop. They played rooms that wanted people moving, without a ceremony around the songs.

The records use a round bass, dry guitar hits, drums that leave space between the beats, and vocals set forward without shouting. The production often sounds independent: close, slightly rough, made for a club rather than a big polished studio. You hear that on “Hippy Hippy Shake” and “Le Brio.”

French listeners already know the debut, Big Soul. Elsewhere, that album is the first stop, and Love Crazy holds the next singles. Begin with “Le Brio” and “Hippy Hippy Shake,” then “Julene,” where the trio stretches the songs and keeps the same rhythm section.

Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone worked a California groove too, but few majors started the story in a Paris club the way Sony France did with this trio. French dance acts of the same decade came out of Paris studios. Big Soul were recorded on the Pacific coast, on their own pressings first, then taken up by European charts as a summer import.

Play “Le Brio” again and you hear a guitar cable, the French line about plugging the guitar in, and three Californians who had a few years of hits in the country that signed them. The bassline had crossed an ocean. On those French dates in the summer, on festival bills and on the radio, the room still jumped.

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