A few years ago, Jack Stratton was tinkering online, found an original clip of the Beatles’ “Something” minus the vocals and set it to a clip of veteran session drummer Bernard Purdie doing his famous shuffle. The clip went viral, and Stratton put it aside until last fall, when Purdie, who has played with Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Steely Dan and a zillion other stars, tweeted that he liked a song by Stratton’s funk band Vulfpeck.
Long story short, Purdie, 77, and Vulfpeck actually played “Something” together in New York’s Central Park. Stratton, 29, a bespectacled studio rat who spends much of a half-hour interview geeking out on classic rhythm sections, couldn’t believe his fortune. “If you had told me when I was doing this bizarre mashup that I’d actually get to do it with Bernard Purdie, I would have been floored,” Stratton says. “His chops are insane. It was like if I was a decent college tennis player and I was just getting whipped by a 70-year-old at tennis. The athleticism of his playing, it was like, ‘How is this possible?'”
The version of “Something,” which landed on Spotify and YouTube, is emblematic of Vulfpeck’s style. The Los Angeles band started in Ann Arbor, Mich., six years ago, when Stratton, a drummer, found like-minded musical prodigies to engineer his vision of contemporary funk and soul music. Vulfpeck, a quartet including bassist Joe Dart, keyboardist Woody Goss and guitarist Theo Katzman, aspires to be a modern version of Motown’s Funk Brothers, setting a rhythmic foundation for guest singers.
The band’s second album, last year’s “The Beautiful Game,” rotates five vocalists throughout the album, from Antwaun Stanley on the Jackson 5-like “1 for 1, DiMaggio” to Laura Mace and Anne Berg on the spirited disco anthem “Conscious Club.” The singers and soloists sound delighted to perform with such a relentlessly tight rhythm section, especially on the vocal asides (“Hey, kids, it’s your lucky day because you get to tell me your favorite baseball team,” “It’s my first night in Berlin, and I wanna dance!”) .
Vulfpeck’s backup-band-minus-regular-singer approach is by design, from studying ’60s and ’70s pop music. “It kind of came down to just looking at the math. Name a band from that era, and you can name their horrific falling out,” Stratton says. “And you name these rhythm sections, and they all get together (years later) for the documentary, and they’re having a great time. It’s like, ‘Hmm, that’s more sustainable and artistically satisfying.”
Although Vulfpeck began at the University of Michigan’s music school, which several core members and a few of the guest singers attended, Stratton grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He was 11 when his father, a professional clarinetist in klezmer band Yiddishe Cup, invited him to perform. Two years later, he received a salary. “He put me on the payroll at my bar mitzvah,” Stratton says.
Stratton assumed klezmer was the center of American culture until he began listening to funk music, which set him on a journey from the most popular musicians, like Wonder and Jackson, to lesser-known performers like rock keyboardist Billy Preston, New Orleans pianist Eddie Bo and drummer James Black. Throughout the interview, Stratton raves about session giants such as drummer James Gadson and guitarist David T. Walker, both of whom have recently sat in with Vulfpeck.
“Just loving feel-good music sets you on this bizarre journey in life where you somehow end up at (longtime gospel star) Walter Hawkins’ ‘Love Alive III,'” Stratton says. “I heard Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone when I was 9, but to get to (the late blues guitarist) J.J. Cale, I’m in my late 20s. Some really obscure stuff is coming in my 30s and 40s.”
Some may recognize Vulfpeck’s name from a gimmick the band pulled off three years ago — an album called “Sleepify,” which was actually several tracks of pure silence, designed to build up publicity for maximum streaming and royalty payments on Spotify. The trick worked, and the band pulled in $20,000, which it used to fund a free tour. But Vulfpeck risked becoming famous for a novelty rather than for its actual music.
“Joe Dart and I would talk about that, and we just decided it wouldn’t really be an issue. It kind of helps us that maybe people have heard our names once before. Maybe people think of us as clever,” he says. “I love how, since then, I’m like Mr. Spotify.”
Vulfpeck, which embarks on enough improvisational explorations in concert to fit into the jam-band scene among Phish and Umphrey’s McGee, with recent write-ups in Relix and at JamBands.com, has shifted its focus to a new album due in the fall. As always, Stratton is working on setting the band’s rhythm section to friends’ compositions, which he calls “undeniable.” “I’ve loved these songs for years. They’re just proven — they got stuck in my head,” he says. “Within any given record, I want to be as accessible as the Jackson 5 and as weird as (comedy duo) Tim and Eric. So it’s just completely nuts.”
Steve Knopper is a freelance writer.
Twitter @chitribent
When: 9 p.m. Thursday, May 5 and 6
Where: Metro, 3730 N. Clark St.
Tickets: Sold out; 773-549-4140 or www.metrochicago.com
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