Blues legend John Lee Hooker stretched out his already lengthy I Hate(d) The Day I Was Born to nearly 20 minutes in San Francisco in 1964.
Tina Turner’s career might never have got started if a backing singer had not failed to turn up for a recording session of this song in 1960.
Soul singers don’t come much better than Marvin Gaye and this deep cut comes from a session in 1967 – the year he brought us his best known tune, I Heard It Through The Grapevine.
Soul singer Al Wilson had a hit with this anti-racist allegory before Donald Trump appropriated it 50 years later as an anti-immigration parable. Because he’s an idiot.
Darrell Banks had one of the greatest voices in soul music – and plagiarised his biggest hit from the equally great Donnie Elbert in their hometown of Buffalo, New York.
I only really know Donnie Elbert for his trio of hits in 1972, when he hit the UK charts with versions of Where Did Our Love Go, I Can’t Help Myself and the Northern Soul classic A Little Piece Of Leather. This slow-burning soul number from way back in 1960 is a very different affair – though Donnie’s remarkable falsetto remains in place.
Is it heresy to suggest that this is not only one of the best Velvets covers but arguably a better version than the original? Especially when you learn that it was recorded in a tent. By a bunch of GIs. In the middle of the jungle in Vietnam.
This slow-burner, with its smouldering brass decorated by guitar licks, is a classic example of the steamy New Orleans hybrid of blues, soul and jazz. A bittersweet ballad of betrayed love written by Al Reed, Danny White’s emotive vocals perfectly articulate the emotion in the lyrics.
The deeper I delve into the vaults of old soul, the more buried treasure I find. Like this 1965 gem by The Brilliants.
This tune was released on Syd Nathan’s legendary King label in Cincinnatti four years after they put out James Brown’s landmark first hit Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag in 1965.
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