As winter draws in, what better to chase away that chilly wind than a sunny slice of reggae from Jamaica. 
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It’s funny to recall how much I hated disco at the time because this is another of those songs that just puts a smile on your face the minute you hear it.

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The Amen Break is the much-sampled drum loop that spawned a thousand tunes and kick-started drum & bass. Here’s the song that started it.

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Here’s a confession. I only really knew Kool & The Gang for their party tunes and schmaltzy ballads in the Eighties.

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Terence Wilson, universally known as Astro, was the percussionist and part-time toaster in UB40, the unfairly maligned kings of UK reggae.

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Ernest Tubb once remarked that whenever one of his songs came on a jukebox, men in bars would turn to their girlfriends and say: “Heck, I can sing better than that.” And, agreed Ernest, “They’d be right.”

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Hank Williams once said that when it came to pulling power for the famously devout music fans of the Deep South: “It was Roy Acuff – then God.”

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Hank Williams was the first superstar of country music and the architect of rock’n’roll. This was the last song he recorded, in 1952. (more…)

Jackson Browne was not the first to record Stay, still the shortest single ever to top the charts, but he made it his own when he covered the doo-wop oldie in 1977.

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