Pleasure and Pain From The Ohio Players

In the spirit of Funk and exploitive album covers  I offer up, Pain and Pleasure from the Ohio Players. While the bands' history is fairly well kown, many folks don't realize their origins go way back to the late 50's á la George Clinton and the P-Funk mob.

They started as the Ohio Untouchables in Dayton,OH  and featured guitar hero (of mine) Robert Ward., later evolving into the Ohio Players, cutting records for Capitol, and then singing to Westbound Records in 1972, where they were labelmates with Funkadelic. Like Funkadelic records on Westbound, The Players offerings were full of experimentation, jazz,funk,soul, and most importantly...Freedom.

By the time they reached their zenith in '76, the Players were, as or more popular than P-Funk for a minute, but the weirdness was gone. Even the album covers, which were exploitive and dangerous (at least the man gets a whipping on the Pain cover), became just plain exploitive, and Hooters©-esque; in line with the disco age that brought the players fame, but also killed them by association.
 Feel Pain
Pain

Pride and Vanity

 Players in The Ohio Players:
Cornelius Johnson
Walter "Junie" Morrison
Leroy Bonner
Marshall Jones
Robert "Rumba" Jones
Billy Beck
Wes Boatman
Mervin Pierce
Ralph "Pee Wee" Middlebrooks
Jimmy Sampson
Vincent Thomas
James "Diamond" Williams
Clarence Willis
Greg Webster
Bruce Napier
Andrew Noland
Clarence "Satch" Satchell
Bobby Lee Fears
Dutch Robinson
Get Pleasure