Ernest Tubb once remarked that whenever one of his songs came on a jukebox, men in bars would turn to their girlfriends and say: “Heck, I can sing better than that.” And, agreed Ernest, “They’d be right.”

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Hank Williams once said that when it came to pulling power for the famously devout music fans of the Deep South: “It was Roy Acuff – then God.”

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Hank Williams was the first superstar of country music and the architect of rock’n’roll. This was the last song he recorded, in 1952. (more…)

A teenage Lyn Collins sang lead vocals on this Northern Soul stomper in an obscure girl group called Charles Pikes & The Scholars.

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Jackson Browne was not the first to record Stay, still the shortest single ever to top the charts, but he made it his own when he covered the doo-wop oldie in 1977.

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The exuberant brass motif that drives this swinging soul number sounds instantly familiar, perhaps because of the many lives this song has had since it was written by The Chi-Lites’ lead singer Eugene Record and Sonny Sanders.

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No one would pretend Nick Lowe was a punk – he had almost a decade in music behind him by 1976. But he plays a key role in punk pre-history.

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Here’s another Deep Soul deep cut from back in the Summer of Love, 1967 – the only hit for Helena Ferguson. And here’s a piece of pop trivia – the backing band is The Ohio Players.

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Here’s another of those not-quite-punk-but-nearly records that came out in the musical hinterland between pub rock and punk in 1976.

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The first time I heard this was in the musical car chase movie Baby Driver, which I love.
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