Ten obscure but splendid '50s rock and roll, R&B and soul recordings - and a mystery "popcorn" classic

Can anyone help? First, please listen to this classic piece of what is now apparently known as "popcorn" from 1959...

In 1959, two 18-year olds, Alan Christian and Joe Zellers, wrote a minor key song called "Lonely Moon" and hawked it around... 

Pop concerts this real gone daddy would love to have attended

Taunton? Yes, Taunton. Wherever, I bet it was fun (although I might have given Vince Eager a miss). Cochran, 21 at the time, was to die following a car crash in Chippenham two months later...

I've found some more obscure rock 'n' roll, R&B and soul classics on YouTube

I'd just returned from the St. Peter's Acton Green Christmas Fair (my wife's papier-mâché birds had all flown off the shelves), made a cup of tea, and settled down for some TV sport and iPadding (I'm strictly dual-screen these days). There was an image of an old single on Pinterest I'd never heard of, so I called up the number on YouTube. Here is Little Ike with the raucous, Little Richard-tastic "She Can Rock" (1959):

Now, where has that been...

Farewell, Cynthia Robinson, the lady who ordered us to "get on up, and dance to the music"

She was the trumpet player whose high-pitched, rasping, trumpet-like voice can be heard at the start of one of the most exciting, energy-charged singles ever released - Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music" - and who later yells "all the squares - go home!" And she's the "Cynthia on the throne" referred to by band-leader Sly Stone in the song.

The legendary New Orleans musical giant, Allan Toussaint died this week - here are some of his greatest songs

I was going to write about the great New Orleans R&B, soul and funk performer, producer, studio and record-label owner and songwriter Allen Toussaint, who died earlier this week at the age of 77, but there’s a handsome obituary of him available here in the Daily Telegraph (although I should point out that “Mother-in-Law” was a No. 1 US hit in 1961, not 1970, and that “Here Come the Girls was first released in 1970, not 1979). Toussaint was a self-effacing music industry figure the greatness of whose achievements eventually dawned on me one day in the late ‘70s when I realised how many of my all-time favourite records were largely the product of his multi-faceted musical genius. Here are eight beloved tracks written by - and in some cases produced and played on - by the great man, plus two of his finest productions of other people's songs. Prepare for musical magic:

I spent ten minutes watching a jet-black cat slinking around our garden this afternoon - which reminded me of this...

...which in turn reminded of this glorious version :

Stranded In The Jungle - with only jazz, exotica, R&B and rockabilly for company

15 toe-tapping tunes to help banish the January blues

Oh God! The news has been full of stupid politicians saying stupid things and lying through their teeth, we've just taken down our lovely Christmas tree, some idiot bumhole has dumped a bunch of crud on top of the black bin-bags waiting for collection around the lamp-post nearest our front door, so the foxes will be on the rampage all night long and the bin-men will as usual do everything in their power to leave an even worse mess in their wake, and the sky is grey and boring, and... well it's early January and I"M NOT GRUNTLED! So I've whacked on the light box and gone hunting for some insanely cheerful songs to take the edge off my mood, and - just in case any of you are feeling low as well - I've decided to share them with you. I'll start with possibly the most cheerful song I know, from 1946:

Richie Barrett's "Some Other Guy" (1962) is one of the coolest records ever released

But I have a terrible admission to make...

A dozen of my favourite car songs which mention brand names and are mostly about cars

The first time I heard "Jaguar and Thunderbird" was on the Chuck Berry On Stage LP in a friend's bedroom in Thornton Road, Wimbledon, circa 1964 (the album was released in '63). The long-player consisted of 13 already released tracks with a fake announcement at the start and audience noise throughout (my friend actually figured out the subterfuge - not bad for a 13-year old). Presumably Berry's record company decided to recycle his old stuff in this way because he was in prison for transporting a 14-year old girl across a state line. "Maybelline" was on the same album, but I've always preferred "Jaguar and Thunderbird":

I salute the mighty organ - the instrument that went from zero to hero in 1960s pop music

Organs became big in 1959 when they featured as lead instrument in three major pop hits – Dave “Baby” Cortez’s chart-topping “The Happy Organ” (not to mention "The Whistling Organ" - now there's a novelty!), “White Silver Sands” by the Bill Black Combo, and Johnny and the Hurricane’s “Red River Rock”. Within a few short years, organs had shaken off their cheerful, vaguely comic “novelty” tag and were all over the pop charts: by the mid-Sixties, they were dead hip.

Little Richard's "Get Down With It" - well, I learn something new every day!

I  was watching a programme of Slade's BBC performances the other evening when the info-strap at the bottom announced that the band's first stomping UK hit, "Get Down and Get With It" (the first time most of us became acquainted with Noddy Holder's extraordinary voice), was a cover of a Little Richard original. I'm ashamed to say this came as news to me. I simply must have heard this record some time in the past - but it's hard to see how I could have forgotten anything as truly glorious as this 1967 classic (as with mlost of Little Richard's tracks, you'll have to click to watch it on YouTube - God knows why):

Hulk! Choke! Sob! – my favourite rock and roll, country and soul tribute songs

"Misirlou", "Walk, Don't Run", "Rock Around the Clock" and other originals that were no such thing

"Misirlou" (1927) by Tetos Demetriades

Five of my favourite Mississippi-born musicians – maybe it’s something in the water

Recent comments from Jackson, Mississippi resident E.F. Bartiam led me to look up a list of well-known 20th Century musicians born in the state. I knew there were a lot of them – but the list is so long, the quality so ridiculously high, and there are so many personal favourites on it that even this lifelong fan of American “Roots” music was astonished. (You can read the list here.) Apart from Bo Diddley, there’s Elvis, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Reed, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf and on and on and on.

Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Little Richard - and the singers who "flattered" them

On the whole I’d rather have my eyeballs waxed than listen to any form of musical “tribute” act – I really don’t get the point. Of course, I enjoy really good parodies (like the Heebeegeebees classic “Meaningless Songs in Very High Voices”) but the attempt to recreate the sound made by another artist simply in order to be allowed up on stage or into a recording studio strikes me as potentially tawdry.

How digital magic turned The Fulminators into happy felines - "Thanks, Al" and "On the Prowl"

Despite working in new media (I’m not sure what it’s called nowadays – it’s getting a bit long in the tooth to be called “new” anything) for 13 years, there are still some digital applications that strike me as nothing short of magic. 

Okay, I’ve long since got over email and the web and mobile phones and digital video recorders – I enjoy them all enormously, and they’ve made a big and largely beneficial difference to my life – but they’re now too much part of the warp and weft of my existence to deliver the visceral thrill they once did. As for slightly more recent innovations – social networks and smart-phones and iPads - well, I’m just too old to care that much.

"Green Onions", "The Locomotion", "The Wanderer" - 1960s pop music was great before The Beatles

We all know that the period between the end of rock and roll’s initial wild-man era – 1956 - 1958 – and the 1964 British Invasion of the US pop charts represented a dreary wasteland of safe, manufactured, talentless teen idols and tepid, gutless singles: the Music Industry, frightened by the wildfire spread of the raucous, lust-drenched yowlings of sexually-deranged young white and black Southerners had regained control by imprisoning Chuck Berry for transporting a minor across state lines, exposing Jerry Lee Lewis’s marriage to his 13-year old cousin, and tucking Elvis safely away in the army for a couple of years.