Bobbi Humphrey, if you were of a certain age and musical persuasion, is one of the greatest women alive. Though she continues to tour to this day with a band called The Original Superstars of Jazz Fusion—a name so obvious and showy that it wouldn’t even pass muster as an ironic band name today—Humphrey actually deserves the self-proclaimed honour. During the 70s she hit it big, playing flute alongside the likes of Duke Ellington and Stevie Wonder and scoring a number of hits herself while on Blue Note. Billboard gave her the honour of Best Female Instrumentalist in 1976. By all accounts she is a talented and successful musician and artist.

But I’m not of the age and musical persuasion that puts Bobbi Humphrey on a pedestal; I wasn’t alive during the 70s and barely know what fusion is. But Humphrey still elicits an odd and completely artificial sentimentality from me. You see, the likes of “New York Times” and “Uno Esta” make me think of the joyous rapture of pop culture ephemera; it’s the sound of old game shows, WKRP in Cincinnati, polyester, and all the other ineffable qualities of the 70s that today only exist in the hermetically sealed time capsule that is The Price Is Right. It’s the strangest case of sound-triggered memory I can imagine; the opening to “New York Times” evokes so strongly and yet so vaguely memories of an era I never experienced.

And damn, was that era ever groovy. Humphrey had an ear for pop and R&B, and so her music straddled a number of stylistic lines. Surely this is what made her so popular, and her music so fun to listen to. I get the feeling, though, that perhaps Humphrey was too successful in her aims; her sound became, at least in some circles, the sound, which must be why I get that flood of artificial memories: I’ve already heard lesser copies of Humphrey and her ilk in every old commercial and news report, every 70s movie with an elevator scene and every episode of The Price Is Right. It feels, strangely, like home.