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...
...all my life? Terrific! So I tried YouTube's next suggestion, "Burnt Toast and Black Coffee", by Mike Pedicin, from 1961. Another winner:
Feeling like Sergeant Bilko on that episode where everything he bets on comes up trumps, I persisted, and was rewarded with Jimmy Nolen's delightfully bluesy "The Way You Do":
Nolen recorded that and a bunch of other tracks in 1956, but they didn't sell, and he went on to play guitar for Johnny Otis and, most notably, for James Brown. A few duds followed, but then then I discovered Joe Lutcher's exotic 1949 jazz number, "Ojai":
Next "Cleopatra", a 1961 Pomus-Shuman soul number recorded by Jamie Coe:
Then there was some classic Northern Soul from Ernie Washington with 1961's "Lonesome Shack":
Also from 1961, Charles Sheffield's "It's Your Voodoo Working":
Banny Price's "You Love Me Pretty Baby" (1965) is just wonderful:
Rose Mitchell's 1954 version of the blues standard, "Baby Please Don't Go" is about as musically stripped-down and authentic as it gets:
I'll end with another fabulous black female voice I'd never previously heard - Betty O'Brien with "She'll Be Gone", from 1961:
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