Rasputin's Stash

Martin Dumas Jr., a session musician, originated Rasputin's Stash, a Chicago-based soul and funk octet formed in the Windy City during the 1970s. Early in the decade he recruited seven fellow local session players to complete the lineup. Cotillion promptly signed the group and issued their first self-titled album in 1971. Membership had fallen to four by the time the remaining musicians—Dumas, Ernest Frank Donaldson, Bruce Butler, and Paul Coleman—tracked a second album for Gemigo, the Curtom subsidiary founded by Curtis Mayfield. The quartet abandoned the possessive in their name and delivered another self-titled LP on Gemigo in 1974. After Gemigo folded, the band transferred to Curtom proper and released two singles late in the decade: “Dance With Me” appeared in 1977 under the moniker r-Stash, followed by “Booty March” credited to Stash in 1978. A distribution change that moved Curtom from Warner Bros. to RSO resulted in widespread roster cuts, and Stash was among the acts dropped. The musicians then disbanded, though not before logging numerous live dates in New York and their hometown of Chicago, where they enjoyed their strongest following. Across subsequent decades Rasputin's Stash and its later lineups remained cult favorites within the rare-groove community. In 2000 the U.K. imprint Sequel assembled the CD compilation The Devil Made Me Do It, which collected the Gemigo-era material and added several unreleased tracks originally slated for a third album.