News & Updates — soul!

Our friends over at the always-tasteful Paris DJs have put up a downloadable mixtape of some of the grooviest nuggets of recent vintage for your listening pleasure. Yes, the Friends & Family Vol 1 set is your audio update on the dopest sounds of today. Their website has given coverage to so many great contemporary bands of the funk, reggae, soul, hip-hop, jazz and boogaloo scenes that it's like they want to do the work for you, keeping you up to date with the freshest arrivals. All of the tunes selected here are from late 2016 or 2017. They cover...

Happy birthday to the R&B singer & dancer Alvin Cash, of Alvin Cash & The Crawlers, Alvin Cash & The Registers and Alvin Cash & The Hundred Dollar Bills fame. Born Alvin Welch, he grew up in St Louis as one of eight children. He and some of his brothers started singing and tap-dancing and they went to school with the future Tina Turner, Luther Ingram and Billy Davis (of The Fifth Dimension). Cash and three of his brothers moved to Chicago in '61 and a few years later hooked up with producer Andre Williams and recorded "Twine Time" (credited...

Sam Maghett aka Magic Sam! Not just the best barbecue on Chicago's West Side, but also one of my very favorite blues guitar players and singers! From his first record "All Your Love" (as Good Rockin' Sam, for the Cobra label) in 1957 until his early death in 1969 (just 32!), his rockin' sound and pleading voice was a staple on the blues circuit. Born in the Mississippi Delta into a family of sharecroppers, he built his own cigar-box guitars as a kid and when the family moved to Chicago in 1950 he had his eyes on the prize and...

One of the Miami greats, Clarence Reid was a top songwriter and producer for many artists ("Rockin' Chair" and "90% Of Me" by Gwen McCrae, "A Woman Will Do Wrong" by Helene Smith, "Clean-Up Woman" by Betty Wright, "Sound Your Funky Horn" by KC & the Sunshine Band, "Freak In, Freak Out" by Timmy Thomas) as well as his own great cuts ("Nobody But You", "Masterpiece"). Really, there are just too many to mention here. Later he became the party-record superhero Blowfly, a persona he toured with until his death in 2016. Here's perhaps my personal favorite tunes he recorded...

Peace & Rhythm's Studebaker Hawk is back to make you move at Northampton's newest spot to get down, Sevenstrong! This Saturday, Feb 18, 10pm-2am. Disco, funk, boogie, and killer jams from around the world! FREE admission, records start spinning at 10PM! Sevenstrong 7 Strong Ave Northampton MA 01060