This week’s inspirational Music Monday song is “Got to Get Me A Job” by Ann Alford. 

The funk is in full effect this morning. 

Soul sister Ann Alford made only 1 single, which came out on the Shreveport, Louisiana Hy-Sign label in 1972. Side A of the 7” vinyl record was “Got to Get Me a Job” and side B was “If It Ain’t One Thing (It’s Another)”.  The song is some hardcore street funk over which Ann shrieks. 

As the story goes, Ann Alford (a vocalist who’d also cut for some RCA Records music in the late ’50s) was apparently just passing through Shreveport with her man Don when they decided to cut the song with the musicians at Sound City, an important southern soul studio at the time. Critics often dismissed the song as just a slower derivative of Sly Stone’s guitar-bass-horn beat that Sly laid down on “Thank You” in 1971. As a result, the song didn’t do much at the time but would later be preserved in regional soul-funk compilation albums. 

Not all inspirational songs have to be in the supportive “you can do it” theme. Sometimes people just need a street-level reality check. Lyrics like “Cost of living is going up, and my money keeps going down” tell it like it is. And it was certainly true then - 1972-1975 is still the 3rd longest period of economic stagnation (unemployment + inflation) in the U.S., next to the current recession  &  the early ’80s. 

OK, enough of the history lesson. Look, life can be a hustle, and it’s up to you to keep the eyes on the prize, pull yourself up, and do what you have to do. No one else can do it for you. Meet people. Get out there. Learn from it. Listen to this song and walk in to your next interview with a strong swagger, confident in who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. Whatever it takes for you to know that you have what it takes to get to that next step, and get that job or client. It’s time to get out of this jobless funk for you!

 By Jeff Fryer, 405 Club Member, Music Connoisseur, Contributing Writer, & funky job seeker

Read more of Jeff’s weekly Inspirational Music Monday posts here.