Hazy Cosmic Jive: The Funky Future-Soul of Dexter Wansel

As a kid growing up on a farm in Delaware, Dexter Wansel would stare at the vastness of the night sky and dream about space. The moon and the stars made an indelible impression on him, one that manifested decades later in his career. Wansel was immersed in music at an early age, working at Philadelphia’s Uptown Theatre during the 1950s and ‘60s. He was an errand boy, bringing musicians and comedians (everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Jimi Hendrix to Pigmeat Markham) whatever they needed. He was in charge of James Brown’s off-stage sweat towel and was the escort, from one club to another, of a friend of his mother, Billie Holiday.

Two of the Uptown’s resident musicians—Doc Bagby and Dave ‘Babe’ Cortez—introduced the teenage Wansel to the organ. Dexter’s fate was sealed. He started a band called the Speakers with his ninth-grade classmate and best friend Stanley Clarke. His budding music career was interrupted by the Vietnam War. It was either enlist or go to juvie, after a run-in with some touchy cops who didn’t appreciate Dexter and his friend trying to throw bottles across the street and into a sewer grate. Dexter enlisted and ended up working for Army Intelligence, and much of what he did remains classified.

After he was honorably discharged, he picked up where he left off. He started hanging around at the recently-founded Sigma Sound Studios, where producers such as Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff were busy creating what would become known as Philly Soul. Sigma was home to Mother Father Sister Brother (MFSB), a large group of studio musicians and backup singers favored by Gamble and Huff. One of the members of the collective, guitarist Roland Chambers, took notice of the young guy hanging out in the lobby hoping for a chance to show off what he had. Dexter Wansel impressed Chambers, so much so that he hired Wansel to play in his band, Yellow Sunshine.

Gamble and Huff signed Yellow Sunshine to Philadelphia International Records (PIR), which was Wansel’s door to the burgeoning world of Philly Soul, a sound distinct from the two dominant styles of soul and R&B: Motown’s catchy, polished soul and the earthier, gritter southern soul of Stax Records. Philly Soul took a page out of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” production and even a bit of the rising tide of Nashville’s countrypolitan sound. That means lush production and big symphonic swells. Philly Soul was the transitional step between 1960s R&B and 1970s disco. Once he was in the front door with Yellow Sunshine, Dexter Wansel parlayed his access into a career as a writer, producer, and arranger for other PIR artists. he also got the opportunity to record his own material.

While all of this was happening for Wansel he was also being exposed to the nascent world of synthesizers and electronic music. Wansel became a fan of electronic music pioneers Wendy Carlos (who did the soundtrack for, among other movies, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange) and Isao Tomita (who composed one of my favorite creepy scores, for Catastrophe 1999: Prophecies of Nostradamus). There was an EMS VCS 3 ‘Putney’ synth at Sigma, so Wansel learned the laborious process of programming it. Later, he got an ARP 2600 synth, which would become the instrument he’d play on many f his most famous recordings. As a writer and producer, Wansel was looking for a way to differentiate himself from Gamble and Huff themselves, figuring he’d never be able to do what they did any better than they were doing it. Synths, which were still regarded by many in the music business with suspicion (if not outright hostility), became Wansel’s unique calling card.

Is There Life on Mars?

In the early 1970s, a number of artists were exploring the concept of “futuristic” music. Soul and jazz were merging with new sounds that would soon be known as funk, and some of the top funk artists, like Parliament, were heavy into science fiction and space themes. Jazz artist Sun Ra had been traveling the spaceways for years. Groups like the Undisputed Truth mixed soul and funk with a theatrical sci-fi appearance that calls to mind David Bowie, KISS, and glam rock. Across the globe, creative artists were experimenting with computers and synthesizers—what, after all, could be more science fiction than the actual science fiction happening around people?

Dexter Wansel might slip a bit through the cracks, surrounded as he was by luminaries like Wendy Carlos and Kraftwerk, and outrageous theatrical acts like French space rockers Rockets, but his contribution to electronic music deserves recognition. He was at the forefront, and he was exploring how to use this new technology in catchy, commercial soul music. First, he started adding it to songs he was producing for others. Then, in 1976, he released Life On Mars, his first album as a solo artist and one heavily powered by his love of space, science fiction, synths, and disco.

In the song “Life on Mars,” David Bowie asked the titular question, “Is there life on Mars?” Dexter Wansel meant his Life on Mars album as an answer, and that answer was “yes.” And they have discos.

The first track, “A Prophet Named K.G.,” conjures the vibe that will run throughout Life on Mars, equally at home on the dancefloor or as part of a 1970s action film score. Cosmic synths join with funky horns and an upbeat tempo, with occasional appearances by a wailing sax, all underpinned by a big, meaty bass line. “Life on Mars,” apart from being the title track, is the standout on the album. It opens with a shimmering cosmic spacescape that gives way to an organ, which leads us toward some big-time dancefloor funk highlighted by vocals courtesy of Barbara Ingram, Carla Benson, and Evette Benton chanting “You should be there, it’s so nice, MARS!”

Terri Wells beams in to perform vocals on the smooth ballad, “Together Once Again,” a perfect song to play while engaged in zero-gravity lovemaking, presuming that we all have the capacity for such amorous astrophysical activity. That song, along with another slower song, “One Million Miles from the Ground,” and the album’s trippy closer, “Rings of Saturn,” are basically the musical equivalent of those blacklight posters that pairs signs of the Zodiac with sexual positions.

And while Dexter Wansel may no longer be a name people drop as often as some of the heavy hitters of the era, he has achieved a sort of cosmic immortality. The synthy funkiness of Life on Mars means that, a few years after its release and still to this day, it provided hip-hop DJs with an endless well of beats to sample. Life on Mars is Philly soul enough to please fans of disco and funky dance albums, and it’s freaky and weird enough to lease fans of futuristic space music and synthwave. It really is a strange, beautiful album to play while you cruise through outer space.