Right On Time

For the second Brothers Johnson album, producer Quincy Jones reconvened the crew that made a success out of Look Out For #1 — a core band consisting of several heavyweight musicians from the L.A. jazz and studio communities — and expanded the horn section. The extra players bring punch and punctuation to the grooves of “Runnin’ for Your Lovin’,” “Free Yourself, Be Yourself” and “Right on Time.” “Never Leave You Lonely” is a brilliant example of the Brothers' squishy grooves, while the bass and guitar interplay in “Brother Man” is so tight it’s hard to tell where one instrument ends and the other begins. Naturally (this is a mid-‘70s Quincy Jones production after all), there are a few blissed-out instrumentals: the smoother-than-smooth funk of “Q,” and the gauzy pop of “Love Is.” The group’s duel taste for airy atmosphere and bumping funk is united on “Strawberry Letter #23,” a Shuggie Otis song that the Brothers Johnson turned into a massive hit. It remains their signature tune — a seamless merger of mainstream pop and gutbucket funk, that decades after its creation still has the stuff to get bodies moving and humming along.