Professor Eddy

To end the year I want to present you a Cashbox list, instead of one from its main competitor Billboard , for a change. Enjoy America's best 30 soul singles in the last week of 1981! A big thank you to all my listeners in the past year and I hope to see you all in 2024. What is striking about this list is that a large number of songs sound like they come from the mid-1970s instead of the early 1980s. It would take another year or two before electronic instruments would dominate the soul sound. In 1981 English synthesizer bands like Soft Cell and the Human League had already become very popular in the pop charts, but the electronic revolution had not reached the soul charts entirely yet. Surprisingly enough Daryl Hall filed a lawsuit and restraining order against John Oates last month, according to British newspaper the Guardian. It concerned a dispute over Oates’s reported plan to sell his share of the pair’s publishing to Primary Wave Music, the company that has acquired numerous...

My Christmas present to all my subscribers is this Sunshine Radio 's Mixcloud Exclusive. It contains the 20 best soul tracks of 1975’s final week, according to Billboard Magazine . It’s almost impossible to find a list without Donna Summer in it between 1975 and 1980, so she’s on this cloudcast as well 😊  Merry Christmas to all of you! Tracklist: K.C. & The Sunshine Band ‎– That's The Way (I Like It) Donna Summer – Love To Love You Baby Pointer Sisters – Going Down Slowly The Dells – We Got To Get Our Thing Together Dionne Warwick – Once You Hit The Road Tavares – Free Ride Diana Ross – Theme From Mahogany Soul Train Gang – Soul Train “75” Gladys Knight & The Pips – Part Time Love Margie Joseph & Blue Magic – You & Me (Got A Good Thing Going) [B-Side] Norman Connors – Valentine Love Hot Chocolate – You Sexy Thing O’Jays – I Love Music (Part 1) Staple Singers – Let’s Do It Again The Miracles – Love Machine Part 1 Al Green – Full Of Fire Earth, Wind...

Ron Lach We all need some sun in these dark days of December, enjoy! 😊  The song by Patti Labelle is from the outstanding compilation album Yacht Soul 2 . The other two best compilation albums of 2023 are, to my humble opinion, Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night (Brooklyn Disco 1974-5) , which contains the Al Foster Band track, and Disco Giants 18 , which I played tracks from earlier. American Gypsy are best known for their song Inside Out , which has been sampled by DJ Shadow, Jazzanova, Groove Armada and others. The band began club performances in Los Angeles in 1971, followed by a two-year tour of Spain. Because of the language advantage the group settled eventually in The Netherlands in the mid-1970s. The line-up then was: Joe Skeete (bass guitar), Michael Hamane (lead guitar), Lorenzo Mills (vocals), Richard James aka Ricardo James (drums), David Harrell (vocals, guitar, sax, flute) and Steve Clisby (vocals, keyboards). During their American period, individual members rec...

Unsplash The Smooth Operators (Martijn Soetens and I) selected some sweet sunshine pop from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dream away on such a winter's day, to paraphrase California Dreamin' . Enjoy! Tracklist: The Love Generation ‎– Love Is A Rainy Sunday (1968) The Zombies ‎– Care of Cell 44 (1967) Tommy James & The Shondells ‎– Crystal Blue Persuasion (1968) Roger Nichols & The Small Circle Of Friends ‎– The Drifter (1968) The Lovin’ Spoonful ‎– Do You Believe In Magic (1965) Triste Janero ‎– Rene De Marie (1969) Brewer and Shipley ‎– Dreamin’ In The Shade (1968) Dennis Yost & The Classics IV ‎– Pick Up The Pieces (1970) Joe & Bing – Come And Bring The Sun Again (1971) Erasmo Carlos – Sorriso Dela (1972) Claudine Longet ‎– Who Needs You (1968) The Everly Brothers – Bowling Green (1967) The Four Seasons – Watch The Flowers Grow (1967) Del Shannon – Colour Flashing Hair (1968) David McWilliams – I Love Susie In The Summer (1969) Sérgio Mendes ...

Unsplash Enjoy the soundtrack to a West Coast sundown! 😊 The closing track by Matt Duncan is brand new, by the way. It sounds like a lost recording from The Nightfly sessions by Donald Fagen. At the time critics sometimes called David Cassidy’s music bubblegum pop. That was simply defined  music manufactured to sell as much records as possible and it was mostly aimed at a very young audience. Bubblegum's classic period ran from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies. At that point disco music took over the single market. However, David Cassidy certainly made some very good records, although in later years he found it difficult to shake off his teen idol image. “His wispiest, breathiest hit was called ‘I Am A Clown’. Poor, sweet, forlorn sexy David – marshmallows could’ve bruised this sound.“ (Bob Stanley in his book Yeah Yeah Yeah )  Midas Shadow by Al Stewart is from his classic 1976 album The Year Of The Cat . The message of this song is that when a successful businessman ...

A few soul ballads, but mostly soulful disco in this week’s Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart from 1978, enjoy!  Chanson were not a French, but a American R&B duo, consisting of guitarist David Williams, and bassist James Jamerson II, the son of the legendary Motown bass player James Jamerson. The two built a reputation via their extensive session work before recording their own LP. Jamerson met Williams while on the road with the Temptations, Williams, at the time, was on tour with the Dells. On their self-titled debut album Earth, Wind & Fire's horn section and members of Toto (Jeff Porcaro, Steve Porcaro and David Paich) played as session musicians. One of the tracks is their hit Don't Hold Back, which peaked at #8 on the Hot Soul Singles chart this week in 1978. It went to #21 Pop. Strangely enough, none of their other songs did anything, so they returned to studio work and playing with major artists on the road. Next week we are heading back again to the West Coas...

Pexels Enjoy this week’s Billboard Disco Action Top 25 ranked from 25 to 1, as published in Billboard Magazine on the 4th of December 1976. Around that time disco somehow sounded like sped up soul and danceable funk. The next year it would all change when Donna Summer introduced the electronic beat with I Feel Love . Disco became a different genre from then on. It took months before Cherchez La Femme by Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band reached the Dutch charts (May 14th 1977), but it eventually became a big hit and stuck at number 3. The band was formed by brothers Stony Browder Jr. and Thomas Browder (aka August Darnell/Kid Creole) in 1974. They started with singer Cory Daye, drummer Mickey Sevilla, and percussionist Andy Hernandez (Coati Mundi). The concept of the group was the re-creation of a 1930s jazz-swing band à la Cab Calloway, with witty lyrics, a disco beat and lush disco arrangements and orchestrations. DJ Dimitri From Paris later named their style 'cocktail d...

Pexels I usually pay tribute to AOR radio , but this time I put the spotlight on eighties R&B and pop radio. Drive back in time and enjoy the sunlitted sounds of retro FM! “There is a Japanese term: Mono no aware. It means basically, the sad beauty of seeing time pass - the aching awareness of impermanence. These are the days that we will return to one day in the future only in memories.” (The Midnight) The track by Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel is from the upcoming compilation Jon Savage's 1983-1985 - Welcome To Techno City , out on Ace Records on January 26th 2024: “By the end of 1984, the true action throughout this period was to be found in electronic, black American and club music.” One of the most remarkable characters in pop history is singer Green Gartside. He started Scritti Politti as a political punk band, but changed his style after hearing Off The Wall from Michael Jackson. He became more R&B oriented and developed a very distinctive way of singing. It ca...