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This was the first big hit for Motown founder Berry Gordy (I think), and the first big hit for songwriting trio Holland-Dozier-Holland (I think) and the first big hit for Martha Reeves & The Vandellas (for sure).
Here is a classic sixties song that I had never heard until a version by Misty Miller popped up in Lena Dunham’s excellent medieval comedy Catherine Called Birdy and sent me delving for the original.
Sometimes a song comes out of nowhere and grabs your ear. That happened to me when Guy Garvey played this on the radio just before Christmas.
Here’s one of those songs I haven’t heard in years (decades?) but it comes right back to me the moment the needle touches the groove. I was never a fan of jazz-funk but you’d have to have a heart of stone, and feet of concrete, not to be moved physically and emotionally by the infectious groove, skittering bassline and blissful vocal of Southern Freeez.
Well this is just stunning; aurally and visually, it’s breathtakingly beautiful and emotionally powerful. It’s featured in two feature films, Sicilian Ghost Story and Corsage.
When I first heard The Allergies I assumed they must be some long-lost American band from the early seventies. In fact they are a white duo from Bristol.
If there’s a more powerful, pertinent and poignant protest song than Midlife In A Small Town by Dead Sheeran, I’d like to hear it.
When I first heard Nina Simone sing this, and for a long time afterwards, I thought she was singing about a “Sea Lion Woman.” Some time later I found out that the song title, which appeared as the B-side of Mississippi Goddam, is actually See-Line Woman.