News & Updates — soul!

Here's a birthday nod to the soulful tenor man Gene Ammons. "Jug" was one of the fathers of the soul-jazz genre and was a popular and prolific recording artist before spending most of his last fifteen years incarcerated on drug charges. He was the son of pianist Albert Ammons and he studied with the infamous Captain Walter Dyett in Chicago and joined the Billy Eckstein band in '44, blowing in that group with Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon. From '47 onward he led his own groups and sessions, which would employ future greats such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Donald...

Cosimo Matassa's J&M Recording studio in New Orleans was the home of some of the biggest hits of the early rock & roll era and he helped shape the NOLA sound. A Sicilian-American who was born and raised in NOLA, he was a funky grocer, record & appliance shop owner and a jukebox servicer before he opened the studio in '45, a time when there were few studios in that musical city. Teenaged Allen Toussaint used to hang out there and practice piano, later on often working directly with Matassa. In the '60s he started his label Dover Records to...

Jimmy Sabater, the velvet-voiced Nuyorican singer & timbalista with the Joe Cuba Sextet, was the smooth English-tongued half of his lead vocal duo with Cheo Feliciano. Check out such great tunes as the smash hit "Bang, Bang", and "To Be With You" (a classic bolero, which Jimmy also cut a good disco version in '76). A native of El Barrio, he met Joe Cuba while playing stickball and the two joined Joe Panama's band. Eventually Joe Cuba took it over and transformed it into the popular Joe Cuba Sextette. They started making records in the late '50s but it was...

In honor of the birthday of the great psych-funk guitarist Eddie Hazel, he of Funkadelic fame, here's a few assorted renditions of his signature emo-metal tune. It's astounding how many versions there are. While they are all pretty faithful, the range of different types of artists covering it is amazing. As such, I have included everyone from blues icon Buddy Guy to new age piano, famous rock stars to underground psych bands, alt-country to P-Funk related projects. You can decide for yourself which ones are worthy. This one, from the often boring French band AIR, possibly my fave cover of...

Happy birthday to the one-and-only "Maggot Brain", the funk-rock guitar god for Funkadelic, Eddie Hazel! Brooklyn-born, he grew up in Plainfield NJ, learning guitar as a kid and singing in church with future P-Funk bandmate Billy "Bass" Nelson. As teenagers the pair were working on the local Jersey scene. In '67 Nelson hooked up with the still-local group The Parliaments, led by George Clinton, for a tour, with Hazel joining soonafter. After securing drummer Tiki Fullwood from the Philadelphia scene, the group relocated to Detroit and became Parliament. Parliament's classic first album, Osmium, came out in '70 with the Funkadelic...