Sylvester And The Hot Band - Sylvester And The Hot Band (1973/2018)

Sylvester & the Hot Band's debut is hard to peg. It certainly comes from a specific time and place, an outgrowth of San Francisco's early-'70s hotbed of gay culture, and there's no question that the cross-dressing Sylvester was out at a time when it was rare, but he blurred boundaries in other ways, creating a funky cabaret act that stretched back to Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith while incorporating the Coasters, James Taylor, Procol Harum, and Neil Young. All were heard on Sylvester & the Hot Band/Scratch My Flower, a record that defied categorization so thoroughly it found no audience outside of the already converted and, decades later, it still sounds like a transmission from another dimension. There's an easy versatility to the Hot Band, who slide out of the straight-up, old-timey blues of "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)" to the steamy funk reinterpretation of "My Country Tis of Thee" without batting an eye, and Sylvester is equally flexible, singing with passion and power, nuance and grace, without ever leaving his falsetto. It's music that reads as camp but plays serious, which is why it's such a bracing listen: depending on mood, it can either sound like the best or worst thing ever, but in either case, there's no denying the skill and purpose behind it.