As history turns out, Gotta Groove is a somewhat influential album of the 60s in terms of album samples later incorporated into a fair number of high-profile rap/hip-hop albums (by Ice Cube most notably). And it signaled where one strand of funk and R&B was going to be headed in the 1970s--with some rock/pop cross-over song selection and a hard-driving rhythm section. The Bar-Kays, a Stax band through and through, put out Gotta Groove 18 months after four of the original members of the band died in a plane crash near Madison, WI on December 10, 1967. Also killed in that crash was Otis Redding. The members of the Bar-Kays were touring with Otis and serving as his backing band. Two surviving members, trumpet-player Ben Cauley (who survived the crash) and bassist James Alexander (who wasn't on the flight), reformed the band. Gotta Groove came out in 1969 and contains some nice vintage funk grooves:
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