Call of the Wild: Good Morning!

The song that grabbed me and shook me awake this morning?
"Call of the Wild," the second track on Dr. Lonnie Smith's masterful "Think!"
David "Fathead" Newman's flute and Melvin Sparks' guitar open "Call of the Wild" with a deceptively quiet grace.
Then the musicians unleash the GROOVE about two minutes and five seconds from the start.
Timbalero Henry "Pucho" Brown, a pivotal figure in the Latin boogaloo movement of the sixties, joins the ensemble, as does his fellow member of the Latin Soul Brothers, conga player Norberto Apellaniz.
The result is a head-shaking mash of Latin, jazz and funk that jolted me out of my slumbering state more effectively than the strongest coffee.
Smith's organ provides the flourishes and Lee Morgan provides one of his trademark, catchy trumpet solos, but Pucho really propels this fantastic song.
It is no surprise to me that denizens of the UK jazz-dance scene of the early 1990s "rediscovered" the vibrant sound of the Latin Soul Brothers.
Based on this morning's evidence: These cats could COOK.