Big Soul – California funk-punk that France claimed

Self-pressed in California, claimed in France

Big Soul, the 1995 self-titled debut by the California trio of the same name, is a rare case of a homemade US album that broke first in France. Guitarist-singer Kelleth Chinn, bassist-singer Caroline Wampole, and drummer Deane Jenkins had worked Los Angeles and San Francisco clubs since the late 1980s without a major deal. They pressed their own disc. At a Sunset Boulevard show, a French traveler bought a copy, carried it home, and the record reached a Paris DJ at Le Niel’s. When Hippy Hippy Shake emptied the floor, Sony France tracked the band down and signed them. The export story is the album’s origin myth, and it is documented enough to keep telling.

The music mixes thrashy guitar, funk bass, and sample-minded interludes. Hippy Hippy Shake is the international door-opener: short, shouted, built for dancing rather than guitar-hero solos. Le Brio (Branchez la guitare) goes further for French radio, with lyrics in French over a choppy riff that TV shows and later ads kept recycling. Elsewhere the tracklist runs from Sweet Thang and Funky Caroline to Sister California, Mystery Jazz, and the Hooker-nodding John Lee Booger. The band took its name from a John Lee Hooker line, «What a big soul,» and the record wears that blues-funk debt without pretending to be a Chicago revival act.

Live in France the trio hit hard: Transmusicales, Taratata with Pow Wow, rooms full of kids slamming to tempo jumps. The album’s DIY production stayed audible even after the Sony push; it never sounded like a polished Versailles pop product. Sampling and electro color sit beside raw guitar/bass/drums takes, which is why French dance floors and rock clubs could claim the same songs.