This has to be one of the most impassioned vocals of all time, Nelson Sanders’s sobbing, heartfelt interpretation of the song title – I’m Lonely.
I don’t think I ever heard the name Levi Stubbs until Billy Bragg wrote and sang a song in the mid-Eighties called Levi Stubbs’ Tears. Even then I doubt I realised who he was.
Not just a deep cut – this psych-garage gem is positively subterranean. And I’m only posting it for the title. It’s rubbish, of course, but I’m intrigued by what little I know of the perpetrators, The Driving Stupid.
How great is this soul ballad?! That organ! Those vocals! You can just picture a disco at the end of the night in the late Sixties with young men awkwardly trying to smooch embarrassed girls on the dance floor as the DJ drops this tune.
Earl Van Dyke was never a household name but he was one of the key figures in the success of Motown in the Sixties.
I first heard The Tonettes on a vast box set anthology of Stax/Volt singles… though they were called The Charmels at that point. This was their first single – and the second to come out on Volt in early 1962.
When it comes to emotionally intense vocal performances, you don’t need to look much further than James Brown singing The Bells.
Few figures from the music world personified the drug-fuelled excesses of the Sixties more than David Crosby, who has died at the age of 81.
The first time I heard this song was when The Clash did it as the lead track on their Cost Of Living EP in 1979. Before long it sent me back to this, the original hit by the Bobby Fuller Four.
Who was the first white artist signed to Motown? Well I always thought it was R.Dean Taylor, the Canadian who sang the great Indiana Wants Me (and Gotta See Jane and There’s A Ghost In My House). It wasn’t. I’m not sure who it was but Debbie Dean was their first female solo artist back in 1960.
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