Another lost classic from the funk vaults, The Watts Breakaway is just one of many musical achievements of Johnny Otis. The singer is Delmar ‘Mighty Mouth’ Evans and the guitarist may well by Johnny’s equally well-known son Shuggie Otis. (more…)

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It’s only listening to this again now, 45 years later, that I realise it’s the best Four Tops song not actually by the Four Tops. (more…)

Freddie McKay emerged as a rocksteady singer in the late 1960s with Prince Buster and Coxsone Dodd, recording at the Studio One and Treasure Isle labels. (more…)

By the mid-Seventies you had to forage far and wide for rough-and-ready roots music in a music world dominated by prog dinosaurs and disco. (more…)

Novelty pop songs don’t come much more annoying than this, at least without children and bagpipes. Except they do – because Convoy prompted an even worse “parody” version. (more…)

The first time I heard Scott Walker’s distinctive baritone was when No Regrets came out early in 1976. (more…)

This may be the most extraordinary discovery I’ve stumbled upon.
It was recorded in 1963 but its psych-tinged blend of jazz, soul and blues is way ahead of its time. (more…)

When I was 18 I hated disco. I thought it had nothing to do with “proper” music involving men with electric guitars. But there was something about Tina Charles and this infectious earworm that broke through my snobbery.

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I Feel Love is so obviously the greatest disco song of all time that no others need apply for the title. But spare a moment for the song that gave Donna Summer her first international hit a couple of years earlier. (more…)