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…)

Betty Davis is the missing link between Tina Turner and Millie Jackson, her raw sex appeal proving too much for America in the early 1970s. (more…)

Parliament-Funkadelic whip up a fiery furnace of funk on this live version of Flash Light lasting almost half an hour. (more…)

Soul singer and trumpeter Joe Quarterman is another unfairly overlooked funkster I’ve just stumbled upon while delving deep into a YouTube wormhole.
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