Out There!: Bustin' Loose by Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers

With 25,000 songs in my itunes collection, it's very hard to devote time to each and every one of my babies. I have so many of these lesser-known songs from the 70's and 80's that probably are amazing and could be four or five stars. But I have to be in the right mood to play my tunes on random shuffle to find them. It's usually during a long car ride, or waking up in the morning that I'll put my iPod on shuffle and hope to catch another funky jam or power ballad that could earn some extra loving. One of those songs that I had in my collection for about two years that I discovered during a random shuffle might have the best dance groove of all time. It's a little gem called Bustin' Loose by Chuck Brown & The Searchers.

Chuck Brown isn't a household name in the world of pop culture, but he is credited as being the Godfather of Go-Go. Go-Go is a subgenre of funk music developed in the D.C. area in the 1970's that features brass and sex. Bustin' Loose was released in 1979, and was originally written for the movie of the same name featuring Richard Pryor. If I'm not mistaken, the song was not even included in the movie. The original song is almost eight minutes long, or should I say eight minutes too short. The bridge of the song is what really catches your attention. I will admit I also like the first half of the tune a little better, especially when Brown goes nuts indicating the various way he busts loose. If I ever heard this song at a dance club, I'd go absolutely nuts. It's on my random request list when I attend parties, and most DJ's look at me like I'm crazy when I ask them to play it. I would go with this song as one of my ever-rotating theme songs in everyday life. Bustin Loose peaked at #34 on the Billboard Pop chart in 1979, but was the #1 R&B song for four weeks. Sadly, it was Chuck Brown's only hit song. Bustin Loose happens to also be the theme song for the Washington Nationals when a player hits one out the park. Since the Nationals don't get much TV time and rarely hit dingers, we don't get to hear it much. Watch out for this song, I'm sure it's going to pop in a big movie or Pixar film very soon. Hmm, as soon as I wrote this, I noticed it's featured in the new DJ Hero game. There we go!

Get your groove on, and give a listen to Bustin' Loose. I'd like to know what other music lovers think. I personally think it's the best funk tune of all time.


And the full version: