Mandingo -

Mandingo was a tribal-funk project comprised of English studio musicians, led by composer/conductor Geoff Love, who oversaw the 1973/74 EMI albums The Primeval Rhythm of Life, Sacrifice, and III, followed in 1977 with Savage Rite.

Background

Mandingo formed in London in 1973 when arranger-conductor Geoff Love extended his long EMI partnership with producer Norman Newell into an instrumental studio project. Love took the name from the 1957 plantation novel Mandingo by American author Kyle Onstott, set in the antebellum South.

Love was born Sept. 4, 1917, in Todmorden, Yorkshire, to African-American stage entertainer Thomas Edward Love and English actress/singer Frances Helen Maycock. He learned trombone at school and entered dance-hall work as a teenager, while bandleader Jan Ralfini brought him into a London orchestra. Love used wartime service in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps to study orchestration, then joined trombonist Harry Gold in the postwar London jazz circuit alongside pianist Norrie Paramor. In 1954, Newell recruited Love to EMI as a musical director for Columbia sessions. Love also led his own studio orchestra and recorded under the Manuel and the Music of the Mountains name.

They assembled Mandingo with London session musicians at Abbey Road. Composers Brian Fahey, Tony Page, Roger Webb, and Tony Osborne wrote the ten pieces selected for the opening program. Love arranged the tracks around massed percussion, brass, guitars, organ, and electronic instruments. Newell produced the sessions with assistant producer Gil King and engineer Peter Bown. Love completed the program as The Primeval Rhythm of Life, the first Mandingo album for Columbia Studio 2 Stereo.

Discography: