With its smooth groove and sweet vocal, sinuous sax and bubbling bassline, this is just the job for a hot summer day. (more…)

I’ve spent a lot of time on the road in the past week, driving to Cornwall and back, listening to 6Music (at least when I had a DAB signal in the car). This is the tune that caught my ear the most. (more…)

Joni Mitchell at the peak of her powers with a crack team of jazz musicians, performing live on her Mingus tour in California in 1979. (more…)

Johnny London made history at the age of 16 when his only recording became the first single to be released on the great Sun Studio label in Memphis. (more…)

Here’s a lost masterpiece blending jazz, funk, blues and soul – and psychedelia – by The Loading Zone, a long-forgotten late-1960s band from San Francisco. (more…)

Raymond Hill was the sax man who got a shout-out from Ike Turner for his solo on Rocket 88 – and the man who fathered Tina Turner’s first child. (more…)

Here’s a hard-rocking instrumental by a guitarist who must surely have been a major influence on Chuck Berry.
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Well this is pure filth. And the last thing you’d expect from a god-fearing gal raised in the church. But there you are: Dinah Washington was one of a kind. (more…)

Any appreciation of the roots of rock’n’roll has to include jump blues pianist and singer Floyd Dixon – the self-appointed “Mr Magnificent.” (more…)

Here’s another one of those proto-rock’n’roll tunes from another of those under-appreciated musicians of colour, this time from 1950 by Piney Brown. (more…)