"Oh Dexter, thy twarted mind bringeth us beautifulh music..."
(Shakespeare could have written this, you know)

As a spirtual-driven musician, it's not easy being recognized as one of the great masters of your genre. But Freestyle has already hailed Glenn Underground as one of the greatest contemporary composers of funky music, and now the deep house scene all around the world is beginning to think the same way, so let's just praise the lord and get into the groove with Mr. Dexter "Life on Mars" Wansel.

You have to start somewhere, why not as a keyboard player with some silly jazz octet called 'Yellow Submarine' ? Whether this name was inspired by the hit song of the-world's-best-band-according-to-Santa-Claus, we'll leave that aside. Fact is, that Dexter's talent for playing the keyboard was soon in need of being the central theme of some great, crossover, ground-breaking, new limits-setting album. That album was Life On Mars, released on the Philly label in 1976.
Like any legendary album, it also has a legendary, ass-kickin', floor-filling track (like Brass Construction's first album had 'Movin' and Grant Green's 'Alive!' featured Sookie Sookie). The track is aptly called 'Life On Mars' and was guaranteed to fill any dancefloor. Dexter played keyboards, Derek Graves provided the throbbing bass line, Terry Wells takes care of some uplifting vocals. The rest was filled in by Dexter's rythm section called The Planets (featuring Darryl Brown, Calvin Harris, Bobby Malach, Al Harrison and the already mentioned Derek Graves).

It might have occured to you by now, that the universe was an important theme in Dexter's titles and music. Listening to other tracks on the album, like 'Stargazer', 'Theme from the Planets' and 'Rings of Saturn', you realize that "spacy" is the most obvious label if we were to put any label on Dexter's music. Which is, of course absurd, since Dexter Wansel is a man with many faces. Straight-ahead Fatback-funk like 'Funk Attack' (on the 1979 album 'Time is Slipping Away'), fantastic instrumental, almost classical arrangements like the superb 'Voyager'(from 1978), smooth disco vibes like 'Disco Lights' ('What The World is Coming To', 1977), ahead-of-its-time jazzfunk like the smooth 'Latin Love' (on 'Voyager', 1978) or 'Ode Infinitum' (one of my Dexter favourites on the 'What The World Is Coming To' album), cheesy soul ballads which you can easily ignore if you're not into this stuff (but will greatly enjoy if you're a soul man/woman/alien), Dexter has loads of them (the 'Time is Slipping Away' title track, 'New Beginning' on that same album, 'Sweetest Pain' which was sampled by The Solid Doctor for his classic triphop-track 'Lights On The Vibe', 'You Can Be What You Wanna Be' from 1976 etc.). Conversely, he even hit the charts with 'Sweetest Pain' in 1979 and 'Solutions' in 1978. What the hell, he even made a reggae track ('Going Back To Kingston Town', 1977) !

If he wasn't recording another classic album, Dexter Wansel played and produced with and for Teddy Pendergrass, The Jones Girls (who do lots of guest vocals on his solo albums), MFSB, Patti Labelle and many more. One buzy bee.

Well, these four albums sure are essential for any jazzfunk fanatic, ya know. Sure, they are not easy to find and from time to time even quite expensive (especially 'Life On Mars' can be worth 50-60$ if in good shape), but with the 1999 Digitally Remastered edition on Snapper Music (a double CD featuring all the tracks from his four albums on Philly), you can all know either enjoy these classic tracks for the first time or keep your original vinyl in good shape. Too bad the title of this fantastic digital archive is quite stupidly 'The Very Best Of Dexter Wansel'.

For a fitting end, let's cite Ian Crockett : "He will forever be revered by the legions of soul and jazz fans for these four masterpieces[...]. It is a travesty that his name is not given the cult status he so richly deserves." And just to give you an idea of how the man actually looks like, listen to my brother when he saw 'The Very Best of Dexter Wansel' unwrapped : "Man, what a sissy-face." Like I said : a man, of many faces...

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