Some of the best pop songs do everything they need to do in less than three minutes. Like this funky little treat.

This packs enough into its 170 seconds to keep any funk fan happy, with the sort of freewheeling groove favoured at the time by James Brown.

The titular Arthur Monday delivers a rambling stream-of-consciousness diatribe over a bubbling beat driven along by drummer Edward ‘Apple’ Nelson, a bit of a cult figure in Northern Soul circles.

The bass player is Robert Rozelle, another cult figure who went on to team up with Arthur Lee when he transformed his psychedelic rock band Love into a funk outfit with an all-black line-up.

As for “Apple,” he has had a colourful life, from being abandoned at birth in the projects of New Orleans to moving to the projects of Watts, in LA, where he perfected his bayou-meets-the-beach brand of funk in session work for everyone from Etta James to Dr John.

His band Apple & The Three Oranges didn’t take off and he tried to fund his own label by robbing rich folk in Beverly Hills and Bel Air.

Returing to New Orleans in the Eighties, he spent the next 15 years in prison and, after losing all his master tapes in Hurricane Katrina, was last heard of living in the California desert and drumming in his local church.