Professor Eddy

Enjoy this foreplay edition of Groovy, sexy and soulful ! I wanted to honour Prince and Billy Paul, so I started with two of their songs and from there I searched for the same kind of ‘arousing records’. This is what singer/songwriter James Taylor wrote about Prince on his Facebook page: "Shocked to hear Prince has died. Baffled that we should lose him so early. How is this possible? One of the most alive and vital performing artists of our time is dead? He generated such amazing energy and was completely sui generis; he was his own creation, totally." The beat of the intro and the keyboards sound like a glam rock song, but ‘Up in a puff of smoke’ by Polly Brown contains quite a few northern soul (female choirs) and disco elements (the break) as well. The track failed to chart in the UK and in the Netherlands, but in the US it became a Top 20 hit. The song reached #3 on the US disco chart and #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1975. Probably one of the most influ...

Joan Smalls Instagram It's time for some Smooth Sailing again! ! In my view yacht rock was some kind of West Coast rock variant of soul music (or a soulful variant of Westcoast rock…), which was played by blue-eyed-soul artists like The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and Hall & Oates. Of course, the term 'yacht rock' relates to the stereotype of the yuppie yacht owner, enjoying smooth music while out for a sail. But many yacht rockers made nautical references in their lyrics, videos, and album artwork (think of Christopher Cross’ ‘Sailing’), because of the fact that sailing was (and still is) a popular leisure activity in Southern California. Sailboats made part of their daily lives. Due to its soulfulness quite a few R&B artists covered yacht rock songs in an even more soulful way, like Tata Vega did with the Ned Doheny song. She was featured in the Oscar winning movie ‘Twenty feet from stardom’ about sublime background singers who could not make it in the limel...

Mary Lake Instagram I’m very glad and more than proud to work together with London-based model, designer, stylist, photographer, composer, singer and DJ (of course!) Mary Lake this time! Her extremely catchy song 'My heart' is one of the tracks. The closing song by Mayer Hawthorne is from his new album ‘Man About Town’ that came out last week. One of the tracks is a re-edit by Todd Terje (named after his idol Todd Terry). He is Terje Olsen, a DJ and producer (Bryan Ferry, Robbie Williams) from Norway. Without any doubt Todd Terje took disco-edits to the highest level possible in the last 10 years. I was very impressed when I first heard his sets on ‘ Beats in Space ’. He refreshed disco with his very original dub effects. For a long time Todd Terje thought that disco was all a bit silly until Mary Lake Instagram Norwegian disco pioneer Bjørn Torske’s ‘Sexy Disco’ caught his ears in 1999 and inflamed his love for the disco sound. In 2001 Todd Terje got in touch with...

To celebrate the fact that Funking Up The Dance Floor has reached more than 10K listens recently, I created a follow-up. It’s a cloudcast inspired by electro(nic) funkateers, like Bernie Worrell (Funkadelic), Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. The latter released a new album last year, called 'Deja vu', at the age of 75. Moroder was born in Ortisei, Italy, on April 26, 1940. He moved to Munich, Germany, where he established his own studio, Musicland, and recorded his debut single 'Looky, looky' in 1969. His first album, 'Son of my father', was released three years later. Around that time Moroder was introduced to fellow musician Pete Bellotte, with whom he formed a production partnership. Together with German/American singer Donna Summer, the trio were to become one of the most powerful forces in the disco-era. Their success beginning with the release of 1974's 'The hostage', followed by their much copied sensual 'Love to love you baby' and the...