Consumer Guide Album

The Trammps: Where the Happy People Go [Atlantic, 1976]
The five-minute version of Wilson Pickett's "Ninety-Nine and a Half" is the key to this album. Jimmy Ellis can't match the depth of the original, and neither can the rhythm arrangement, which is light, festooned with horn licks, fanciful if you like it and just fancy if you don't. But if you like it it's not only fanciful but functional--that is, danceable. As are the other six cuts on this album, the two forgettable ones as well as the four catchy ones. I'm not especially happy in the disco sense of the term, but I like it OK myself. B+