Isaac Hayes is such a natural star: muscular and shaven-headed with a deep and surprisingly sensitive voice, underpinned by funky, lavishly orchestrated jams.

(more…)

Colosseum were a prog band formed by former members of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the Graham Bond Organisation. This was their only single.

(more…)

Max Romeo’s career spanned the early days of ska through rocksteady to fiery roots reggae with a political conscience, peaking in the mid-’70s.

(more…)

Sandie Shaw scored her last of her eight Top Ten hits with her 21st single, Monsieur Dupont, in 1969.

(more…)

The Flirtations are one of those bands who left their native USA to find success in the UK… and then became even bigger back in America.

(more…)

Here’s a ’60s band I’ve never heard of before, a female-fronted outfit with the disappointingly humdrum name of Smith, with their solitary hit single – a cover of Baby It’s You.

(more…)

The Bee Gees song written for Otis Redding but redone as a hippie country-soul heartbreaker. Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, give it a country twang replete with pedal steel guitar that was entirely absent from the original.

(more…)

This is a fantastic discovery If you like funky horn sections and you like powerful female voices. They don’t come much more powerful than Lydia Pense and her San Francisco-based band Cold Blood.

(more…)

This song is such a masterpiece with which to launch a career. And Donny Hathaway is rightly regarded as one of the greatest of all soul singers.

(more…)

Cream’s original version of this song was played a lot when I was at school, driven along by a bassline Jack Bruce apparently inspired by seeing a Hendrix concert. It was only much later that I heard this funky soul version by Spanky Wilson, with its exuberant horns and serpentine basslines.

(more…)