Professor Eddy

Cotton Comes To Harlem One of the tracks that I selected for this cloudcast is 'Band of gold' by Freda Payne. The song. written by Holland-Dozier-Holland after their split from Motown Records, went to number seven in the Netherlands and number three on Billboard in 1970, notching Payne her only Top Ten hit. It went all the way to number one in the UK. The lyrics are about a woman who has been let down by her guy on their wedding night... Speaking of Motown, according to Jason Ankeny (Allmusic.com), R. Dean Taylor (born 11 May 1939 in Toronto) "remains one of the most underrated acts ever to record under the Motown aegis." As a singer, American audiences know him best for his 1970 Billboard Top 5 hit, 'Indiana Wants Me', about an Indiana murder fugitive that featured police sirens in the intro and an outro that included more sirens and a police officer warning the fugitive that he is surrounded and to give himself up. The single hit #1 in Taylor's nati...

Picture: pxxxxxxxxq When I started to listen to pop music, around 1974, glam rock was very popular, but disco started to break through. ‘Rock your baby’ by George McCrae was one of the sparks that lighted the fire. Disco became the next big thing and glam rock band Mud, like many others, tried to move to the dance floor too when they recorded ‘Shake it down’. Mention the name Mud to most Americans and the likely result will be a blank stare. In England and the European continent, however, between 1974 and 1976, Mud was one of the hottest glam rock acts there was, charting a series of monster hit singles and recording a pair of delightful rock & roll-oriented albums. They were never a profoundly philosophical band, and never pretended to be. The group played music to have a good time, and merely asked that others join in, which millions of people did for a few years. When glam rock faded as a result of the growing dominaton of disco, Mud couldn’t find the right answer, apart f...

Teenagers at Galveston Beach, Texas in the 1980s These songs are mostly based in the tradition of disco, but house sounds are peeping around the corner now and then. From the mid-eighties house music started to push disco (boogie) away. Early house music was generally dance-based music characterized by repetitive 4/4 beats, rhythms mainly provided by drum machines, off-beat hi-hat cymbals, and synthesized basslines. While house displayed several characteristics similar to disco music, it was more electronic and minimalistic, and the repetitive rhythm of house was more important than the song itself. This is what Pitchfork wrote about ‘DJ-Kicks’ by Dâm-Funk (‘Starlight’ by Index and Uncle Jamms Army's ‎'Dial-A-Freak' are two of the tracks): “Despite Dâm’s preference for playing tracks pretty much all the way through—which suggests an infectious, wide-eyed passion for the music that fits into his mind-control powers—the mix is properly appreciated as a whole.” Enjoy ...

Ekkah Kenny Loggins (from Loggins & Messina) recently said in an interview that in his opinion ‘yacht rock’ is a combination of West Coast pop/rock, smooth jazz and R&B and I think he’s totally right. Mr Funk aka Seasidevibes , who helped me out on this cloudcast, calls the sub-genre ‘soulful West Coast’. Martijn Soetens and I think that it’s music that sounds best on FM radio and German DJ Supermarkt (known for his ‘Too slow to disco’ compilations) claims it’s music you can almost dance to. This is what he wrote about his latest compilation ‘The ladies of too slow to disco’: “Turns out the guys didn’t have a monopoly on either writing great songs or the excesses that went with recording them. Fighting bigger battles even to be heard, the women of Too Slow To Disco represent the vanguard of female pop.” Joan Smalls Instagram Following the impact achieved with 'Small talk', London-based disco pop duo Ekkah (formed by Rebecca Wilson and Rebekah Pennington) is b...

Enjoy this disco-ish episode of Mellow Moods by The Smooth Operators ! Again Martijn Soetens and I pay tribute to the 1970s (and early '80s) FM radio sound. The song by Betty Griffin is from ‘Greg Belson’s Divine Disco' ('American Gospel Disco 1974 to 1984'). The album is a great snapshot in time encapsulating the raw power of a spiritual performance, set to the pulsating disco rhythms that were in vogue on the dance floors of the day. The compilation also includes remixes and edits by Steve Cobby (who was a member of Fila Brazillia) and Rahaan. It will be released by Cultures of Soul next month. The track by Lace is a remix from DJ legend Larry Levan. It's the norm now, but at the birth of modern dance music in the 1970s, DJs, producers and remixers were rarely the same person. As influential as his Loft parties were, you'd be hard-pressed to find a record bearing the credit of 'a David Mancuso production'. And while Tom Moulton invented the remix...