1965
Nina Simone’s ten-minute-long interpretation of the biblical-themed song Sinner Man became a classic in her hands.
Tony Clarke never had a big hit in his lifetime but is revered here for one of the biggest Northern Soul favourites of all time – Landslide. (more…)
This song by one-hit wonders The Castaways is the archetypal Sixties garage song. I first heard it on the Nuggets compilation a decade or so after its original release in 1965. (more…)
This song immediately evokes a poignant childhood memory for me, from a family holiday in Cornwall in the summer of ’69.
You can’t see him in this footage but this is the moment keyboard player Barry Goldberg – who died in January -became part of one of the most historic gigs in musical history.
If there’s one artist I wish I’d seen live more than any other, it’s probably Nina Simone. Especially when she was a regular at Ronnie Scott’s in the 1980s. Except I had probably not heard of her back then.
Ray Charles is rightly credited with almost single-handedly inventing soul and R&B in the early 1950s. But in the 1960s he surprised his fans, and the whole of the pop world, by turning his hand to country-and-western.
Lou Reed and John Cale met in the early Sixties and you can hear the germs of the Velvet Underground’s song on their early songwriting collaboration Why Don’t You Smile, released by The All Night Workers.
When it comes to The Shangri-Las, my knowledge doesn’t stretch much further than their greatest hits, led by the glorious Leader Of The Pack.
When I think of classic “country-and-western” music I think of a song like this – a jaunty rhythm, the twang of a steel guitar, a catch in the voice, and a lyric filled with heartbreak (and a hint of humour).