Yes, everyone loved the Supremes, but for sheer soul power emanating from an all-girl groups—”girl groups” were what they were called in the Sixties—you can’t beat Martha and the Vandellas. The powerful voice of Martha Reeves really drips “soul”—which I suppose I define as powerful emotion expressed in rhythm and blues songs—more than did, say, […]
Also written by Smokey Robinson (a musical genius!), but performed by the Temptations, “Since I Lost My Baby” comes about as close to perfection as a soul song can get: a classic fusion of music and lyrics. Released in 1965, I can’t believe it peaked at only #17 on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues singles […]
This week I decided to put up my favorite soul songs from the sixties (and perhaps a few from the succeeding decade). (Don’t ask me to define the genre: I know a soul song when I see it.) Let us hear no dissent about this endeavor, though, as always, I welcome dissent about my choices […]
Every month or so, an old friend in England sends me a pile of clippings from British newspapers: things he thinks I’d like to read. They’re eclectic but mostly about wine and music. Two nights ago, making my way through the latest batch, I found a piece from the March 6 Times by Billy Connelly, […]
Singer Richie Havens (b. 1941) died yesterday of a heart attack at age 72. To many of us who grew up in the Sixties, he was an iconic folk singer—not wildly popular, but immensely talented and certainly not obscure. He first gained fame as the opening act of the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 (I […]
Well, I thought I’d seen it all, but this Japanese commercial for a smartphone, brought to my attention by alert reader Jon, beats all. It’s a huge xylophone, placed in a hilly Japanese forest, that plays Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring as a wooden ball rolls down it. Fantastic—do not miss this one! Imagine […]
by Greg Mayer Funk is one of the many distinctive (mostly African-) American musical styles: scratchy guitar, horns, bass and drums providing plenty of bottom to put one nation under a groove. Pioneered by greats like James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone, and brought to its apotheosis by the Parliament Funkadelic collective (whose […]
Too true! UPDATE: Judging from the first few comments, I don’t think readers quite get what is going on here. Ergo, I append the sheet music for the normal rendition: Oh, and Beyonce’s version of the Star-Spangled Banner that I liked during the Inauguration? Lip-synched! h/t: Grania
Reader Atom sent me this catchy Christian anti-evolution video, “Did Charlie make a monkey out of you?”, with the song by Tom Walk and Russel Alan Pratt. This is the Kool-Aid that our Christian friends imbibe. I have to say that it’s a bouncy tune, even if the only substantive argument is that there arent’ […]
When we were crusading for Henri’s installation on the Wikipedia page of famous cats, an alert reader, M. Janello, pointed out a famous cat that was unknown to me. It was Ketzel, a Jewish cat who was the owner of Aliya Cheskis-Kotel and her husband Morris Moshe Kotel. Kotel was the chairperson of composition at […]
