Flashback 1973-Bobbi Humphrey’s Harlem River Drive  This classic
and future-forward  jazz funk song (not to be confused with
Eddie and Charlie Palmieri’s 70′s supergroup) appears on flute
legend Bobbi Humphrey’s 1973 album “Blacks and Blues”. Ms
Humphrey herself was from Texas but got her break at the Apollo
Theater’s Amateur night at the urging of Dizzy Gillespie.  The
song was composed and arranged by New Jersey music masters the
Mizell Brothers and was actually recorded in California but it
is quintessential Summer in New York driving music, flying up
the FDR Drive, the river sparkling in the sun, and merging
seamlessly onto Harlem River Drive.  The Drive itself originated
in the late 19th Century as a horse racing track and leisure
area called the Harlem River Speedway . In 1964 under Robert
Moses, it was opened as a parkway to connect the George
Washington Bridge and the East River Drive (now the FDR Drive).
A few years ago, Ms. Humphrey’s updated her hit in a Harlem-
centric video.