Eddie & The Ant Hill Mob (Michael Hampton Pre-P-Funk?)

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Eddie & The Ant Hill Mob were an early '70s funk band out of Cleveland, OH. Personnel listed for the 1972 track, “The Number Runner” includes bassist Ezra “Eddie” Robitson, singer Rahman Melton, trap-setter Mike Wilson, percussionists Norman Robinson and Kenny Clay, and (get this) 15-year-old Michael Hampton on guitar. Is this an early recording of Michael “Kidd Funkadelic” Hampton before he joined P-Funk?

I’m wondering if anyone on this forum has a direct line to Michael and can confirm that he is the teenaged guitarist playing on this track (there is a lengthy guitar solo on Part 2).

See release notes here.

Part 1:

Part 2:

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Lige would probably know. Isn’t he a member here?

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Interesting! Never heard about Ant Hill Mob before. I looked up some old interviews with Kidd Funkadelic, but he didn’t mention what he did before pfunk…

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Agree I never have happened to see an interview where Mike talked about his pre-Funkadelic bands, but it does seems to be the case that as a teen, before PFunk, he did time with this Eddie & the Ant Hill Mob…they were on a Cleveland label (Boddie) that I think specialized in that sort of African-American early 70s acid-funk.

I first read about some of these bands (there turned out to be more of them than I prob have previously assumed) in a interesting article/publication I stumbled across a few years ago, mainly about Funkadelic but also with these sidebar articles about some other, much lesser-known bands and guitarists from back then playing in that same funky acid rock Eddie Hazel-style we all love so much:

In particular, I checked out (and recommend!) the acts 1) Jimi Macon and 2) Stone Coal White + most of the bands/songs on the great Various Artists compilation “Function Underground: The Black and Brown American Rock Sound 1969 - 1974”…and ALSO the compilation “Bodie Recording Company: Cleveland, OH”, which also had tracks by a band mentioned in that article (Creations Unlimited), as well as another track I found I liked quite a lot: “I’m a Number Runner” by the aforementioned Eddie and the Ant Hill Mob, who, from what I’ve seen elsewhere on the internet, does seem to have had a 15-year old Michael Hampton burning it up on guitar (uncredited, but several of the others weren’t , either)-

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