Dyke & The Blazers’ postulation that Jimmy Smith and Nancy Wilson merited shout-outs alongside James Brown and Johnny Taylor on “We Got More Soul” expanded the way I thought about music when I encountered the jubilant 1969 single in the 1980s. Yet until now, my appreciation of Dyke & The Blazers was largely limited to “We Got More Soul” and "Funky Broadway". A pair of illuminating new Craft Recordings releases- Down On Funky Broadway: Phoenix (1966-1967) and I Got a Message: Hollywood (1968-1970)- filled me in on what I’ve been missing. I didn’t know much about the group’s tragic career arc until I watched Craft’s two-minute documentary. Dyke & The Blazers may have been largely limited to emulating Otis Redding and Booker T. & the M.G.’s, but the frenetic funk documented on Down On Funky Broadway and I Got a Message is my idea of definitive party music.