Calling Pieces of Peace a footnote to history is both technically true and somewhat unfair. They had more than just obscurity going for them: As one of Chicago's premier soul and funk bands of the late 1960s and early 70s, they scored the enviable gig of backing up Syl Johnson during a number of his shows and, later, on his incendiary 1970 LP Is It Because I'm Black. But despite busting their chops performing around town and acting as a session group for a number of other Chicago artists, they never got around to releasing anything under their own name aside from a 1971 Twinight 45, "Pass It On Pts. 1 & 2", which was recently reissued in an exact-duplicate 7" vinyl-geek reproduction by "Eccentric Soul" curiosity purveyors Numero Group. The group eventually disintegrated during a tour of Southeast Asia, mostly due to homesickness and pressure over managerial disputes, and subsequently the one album they had waiting in the wings got relegated to the back burner and eventually lost.
Lost, at least, until Quannum unearthed the tapes for the sessions-- an undertaking assisted, naturally, by that eternal cratedigger DJ Shadow-- and reassembled them into the self-titled LP that Scarab Records originally intended to release in the early 70s. Unsurprisingly, it sounds like the driving, horn-driven jazz-funk of "Pass It On" taken to its logical conclusion, but there was another hint as to how this album might've sounded: not from their work with Syl Johnson, which leaned more towards traditional soul, but from the fact that many of the members of Pieces of Peace (including keyboardist Benjamin Wright and trumpet player Michael Davis from this album's lineup, as well as former drummer Fred Crutchfield) later went on to play with fellow Chicago natives Earth, Wind & Fire. Granted, Wright and Davis were part of EW&F's circa-1979 disco-jazz I Am incarnation, which didn't exactly have the same sound as the group that played Melvin Van Peebles' arrangements for Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song eight years previous, but backtracking to that era puts Pieces of Peace squarely in the same soul-jazz/heavy funk neighborhood as that more famous group's early 70s work.
While the style of the album is fairly uniform, Pieces of Peace do show the capability to both keep things lock-groove tight and stretch out a bit further into improvisation, even if it doesn't carry through the entire album. Much of the LP puts its weight behind John Bishop's guitar and the close-harmony horn section of Michael Davis and alto sax player Jerry Wilson, opting to letting the rhythm section simply keep pace. It doesn't quite work in the opening instrumental "Cease Fire", where the horns and Benjamin Wright's keyboards are the only things that don't sound like the products of an over-ambitious first take (enough with the gongs already). But despite that opening speed bump, the record still benefits from the rhythm of the solid, unostentatious bassist Bernard Reed and the teenage drummer Fred Crutchfield, who plays a couple of years beyond his age and lends some intensity to the percussion where necessary.
When they have it together, it all clicks nicely, as it does in the Chi-Lites smoothness of the love ballad "I Still Care" or the greasy Bar-Kays strut of "Flunky for Your Love". Thankfully, despite their status as a session band best acquainted with backing up already-established singers, Pieces of Peace were able to recruit a perfectly capable vocalist in King Johnson. He fills those two tracks and a third, "Pollution", with a raw brand of soul that, while not particularly different from any number of frontmen from your average early 70s rare groove outfit, at least manages to make himself heard above an already powerful band.
Where Pieces of Peace really shine is in their extended jams: the aforementioned "Pollution" rides on a tricky funk groove that switches up into frequent false stops and meter changes, punctuated by punchy brass stabs and panicky organ riffs before culminating in a couple riotous horn solos that'd make Tower of Power envious. "Peace and Blessings" is the most percussive track, swirling around a wall of African percussion (provided in part by members of Chicago soul-jazz fellow travelers the Pharaohs) and building a raucous, chaotic, but cohesive free-jazz horn sound that sort of resembles the garage-funk version of Miles' On the Corner. And "Yesterday's Visions", which clocks in at just under 11 minutes, pushes the Isaac Hayes orchestral psychedelic soul aesthetic just a bit further, crafting a miniature suite that goes from ghostly smoothness to an amped-up, high speed dance groove to prog noodling to a wild-eyed acid-funk fusion.
There are a couple of bonus tracks that pad out the album's running length, largely of the curiosity/alternate take variety: an instrumental version of "Pollution", which loses a bit of its eco-novelty charm without Johnson's vocal, and a less-taut version of "Yesterday's Visions". But they add little more than some additional context to an album that actually seems to benefit from its sense of mystery. While most people who compulsively snap up obscure funk reissues won't find much of anything revolutionary, they'll probably realize what a shame it was that it went missing, and be glad it finally saw daylight.
