MY GIRL AT 60!
If you’re an avid reader of the soul and/or music press you’ll know that the TEMPTATIONS/ SMOKEY ROBINSON song ‘My Girl’ is now 60 years old! And guess what? Motown is making a big...
THE TEMPTATIONS: ‘Wish It Would Rain’ (Motown/UMe/Elemental Music)
Released in April 1968, this was the final Temptations album to feature David Ruffin, the bespectacled, husky-voiced lead singer whose egomania and disruptive personality would see him fired from the group a few months...
IVY JO HUNTER DIES…
News is filtering through from the States that Motown alumnus, IVY JO HUNTER died yesterday. Few details are currently available save that Hunter was 82. Born, George Ivy Hunter in Detroit in 1940, Hunter...
JOE MESSINA DIES…
Acclaimed Motown guitarist and original Funk Brother, JOE MESSINA died on Monday 4th April. He died at the Northville, Michigan home of his son, Joel Messina, succumbing to a 12-year kidney disease. He was...
VARIOUS: All Turned On (Ace/Motown)
In the 50s and for the early part of the 60s, instrumentals were mainstays of the pop charts both here and in the States. Oddly, I think, for someone as commercially savvy as Berry...
VARIOUS: Good, Good Feeling – More Motown Girls (Ace)
That legendary Motown vault continues to give! Who’d have thought that the Gordy empire’s archive had any more treasures to yield. Well it does, as this wonderful, new 25 tracker from Ace records proves....
VARIOUS: A SYMPHONY OF SOUL (UMC/Island)
Followers of music trends over the last few years will have noticed the proliferation of, for want of a better description, “reimagining” albums. You now the sort of thing – new recordings of classic...
I HEAR A SYMPHONY….
It’s been quite the thing over the past few years – new recordings of classic pop and soul from various symphony orchestras. We’ve had countless orchestral reimaginings of everything from the works of Elvis...