Inveterate soul web surfers might well have come across a site that bears an uncanny nominal similarity to www.soulandjazzandfunk.com – the world’s brightest and best independent soul music web destination. The almost sound-a-like site is www.soulandjazz.com , and we need to say at the outset that it has nothing to do with us here at dear old SJF – indeed the only thing that it has in common with us it that its people share the same dedication to, and love of real soul music and groove-heavy jazz that we do.
www.soulandjazz.com is the brainchild of Londoner BRIAN HURST who’s nursed an abiding passion for all things soulful and jazzy for over 35 years. In his teens, BRIAN worked as a mobile DJ and club jock before graduating to the London pirate radio scene with a stint at Horizon radio which was later, of course, to morph into Solar. In 2000, BRIAN created www.soul24-7.com which pioneered soul music on the then fast growing internet. Then in May 2009 he launched www.soulandjazz.com – a legal and commercial free podcasting service. Currently the site boasts 274 podcasts featuring music across the soul and jazz spectrum from the past 70 years. Each month 20 new DJ-led podcasts are added and BRIAN’S confident that his burgeoning catalogue offers something for everybody.
www.soulandjazz.com also offers promotional and testing services for new CD and digital releases and later this year BRIAN intends to open a recording facility in Atlanta, Georgia. BRIAN has worked in the city since July 2009 when he joined WCLK Atlanta to present a soul and jazz show dubbed ‘The Selection’. From the new studio he hopes to develop soulandjazz.fm which will be a fully 24/7 live streaming operation organized on a subscription basis; eventually, there could be a TV station too.
To put hard-working BRIAN into a musical context he tells us that he couldn’t really name a favourite artist or style of music, but he adds, “If you think along the lines of Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, or new cats like Avery *Sunshine or Live Tropical Fish, you’ll be on the right track.” BRIAN’S greatest musical influences though come from his late father and the many thousands of artists that he has had the pleasure of listening to and working with over the last four decades.
BRIAN’S creations certainly have lots to offer and logging onto www.soulandjazz.com will reveal much, much more.
