Headhunters served up this fat slice of funk in 1975, featuring a famous sample that’s formed the basis  of countless hip hop tunes ever since. (more…)

The Five Stairsteps were five teenage brothers and sisters nicknamed The First Family Of Soul – a title that would soon be passed on to The Jackson 5. (more…)

There’s something horribly prophetic in the lyric of Gil Scott-Heron’s song The Bottle: “Look around on any corner/If you see some brother lookin’ like a goner/It’s gonna be me.”
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The life story of Waylon Jennings is the stuff of country music legend. And it’s all true, from his youth picking cotton in Texas to teenage radio DJ to playing bass with Buddy Holly – giving up his plane ticket on that fateful day the music died. (more…)

After becoming a star with Harvest, Neil Young got back together with Crazy Horse for Zuma, creating the epic guitar extravaganza of Cortez The Killer. (more…)

Once in a while you come across an old tune you’ve never heard before by a musician you’ve never heard before and it’s so great you can’t believe you didn’t know it. Like this slice of psychedelic soul. (more…)

You hear the word ‘classic’ bandied about a lot but Express Yourself is a solid-gold soul and funk classic of the first order. (more…)

Roy Ayers’s song Everybody Loves The Sunshine is the quintessential summer groove, guaranteed to brighten any day. (more…)

Heard on its own, this melancholy ten-minute guitar apocalypse by Funkadlic would be impossible to categorise. (more…)