RIP Howard Tate, 1939-2011

60s R&B singer Howard Tate passed away this week aged 72. Tate was another sadly unappreciated soul giant who is revered amongst crate diggers for his blues- and gospel-tinged recordings, primarily from 1964 and 1968.

Probably the quintessential Howard Tate track is the majestic Get It While You Can. This is perhaps better known as a Janis Joplin song, but it's hard not to argue that Joplin's later version pales beside Tate's original.


Another favourite of mine is Ain't Nobody Home, also better known for being covered by BB King.


The composer of both songs, the great Jerry Ragovoy, also sadly passed away in July this year.

RIP Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)

British singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London home from causes yet unknown. She was 27.

Winehouse's dysfunctional personal life and troubles with substance abuse were legendary and had become something of a running pop-cultural joke. But that aside, let's focus on her music. She only released two albums, but each made a significant impact. Frank (2003) was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, while Back to Black (2006) was a multi-platinum-selling number 1 hit around the world. The two albums when taken together show the breadth of Winehouse's singing and songwriting ability. Frank is a jazz album with soul and hip-hop inflections, while Back to Black is strongly influenced by 60s girl-group soul.

Winehouse deserves a lot of credit for re-introducing retro-soul to the mainstream; it was a style bubbling around in the early 00s waiting for a larger audience, until Back to Black put the genre back in the top 10. The key was Winehouse's use of Mark Ronson and Salam Remi as producers, and NYC's fabulous Dap Kings as her backing band. It is fair to say that the huge success of two other British female singers, Adele and Duffy, owes a lot to Winehouse's breakthrough with Rehab.

One of my all-time favourite dance-and-get-wild tracks is Winehouse's guest appearance on Mark Ronson's Versions album. Valerie is a cover of the Zutons' 2006 hit, which is very different but also awesome in its own right.


But while Winehouse's best-known work was similarly brash and brassy, her slower, tender moments were often even better. Love is a Losing Game, off her second album, is just amazing in it's timeless beauty.


Frank to me is an uneven album stylistically, and Winehouse herself said she was only 80% happy with it. But it has some wonderful songs, particularly this one, Help Yourself. The song title is sadly ironic.

RIP Gil Scott-Heron (1949 - 2011)

Another giant of music, the legendary singer Gil Scott-Heron, passed away this week aged 62. A prolific artist who released an album every year of the 1970s before his life began to go off the rails, Scott-Heron carved out a distinctive style of his own, blending jazz, soul, blues and funk with an early form of rap poetry.

Scott-Heron was one of those cats who never had anything resembling a hit on the pop charts, yet inspires reverence among those in the know, and was extremely influential to artists in a number of genres. He was also a complex and deeply flawed character; while his songs spoke eloquently and powerfully about the ills facing African-Americans, he spent most of his life from the early 80s onward in the grip of crack cocaine, and spent several years in jail in the 2000s for drug-related offences. It always seemed almost inconceivable that such a fate could befall a man as intelligent and positive as he. He did manage to release an album in 2010 (his first in 16 years), entitled I'm New Here.

I managed to catch the man live in the mid-90s, touring off what was his then-comeback album, Spirits. Gil was only in his mid-40s but I'd guessed him to be at least 20 years older due to his weathered, emaciated appearance. From that underrated album, Don't Give Up is not one of his better-known tracks, but it represents the breadth of his musical oeuvre, with his distinctive spoken/rapped delivery and blues-soaked singing over a jazzy groove. It's sad listening to these lyrics today, which reflect on his many frailties yet offer hope for a salvation that was never to come.


The song that most people know Gil Scott-Heron for was one of his very earliest releases, The Revolution will not be Televised. While the song's many pop-cultural references have long since dated, its fierce critique of television and mass consumerism's effect on societal consciousness is just as relevant now as it was back in 1970.

Scott-Heron has often been dubbed "The Godfather of Rap", something of a misnomer and a label he was apparently not fond of. His distinctive brand of poetry set to music did not directly give rise to hip-hop, although he was very influential to later generations of rappers. In many ways he resembled his contemporaries, The Last Poets, and like them is frequently associated with the black militancy of the era. But Scott-Heron's politics were often more nuanced, and in his poem Brother he skewers those so-called black revolutionaries who were more concerned with superficial displays of pride than actually bringing about positive change.

While his first album was primarily poetry accompanied by conga beats, his subsequent work revealed his more musical leanings. He played keys while singing in an unmistakable baritone that was unpolished but soulful and jazz-inflected.

We Almost Lost Detroit is from his 1977 album Bridges. Hip-hop fans might recognise chunks of the song sampled in Black Star's Brown Skin Lady and Common's The People.


The Bottle is one of Scott-Heron's better-known works, from his 1974 album Winter in America. On flute is his long-time collaborator Brian Jackson.

RIP Solomon Burke (1940 - 2010)

We are entering an era where some of the greatest pioneering soul artists are getting well into their 60s and 70s and departing this life, and yesterday we just lost another one. "The King of Rock 'n' Soul" Solomon Burke passed away of natural causes, aged 70, aboard a flight to the Netherlands where he was scheduled to perform with Dutch blues/rock band De Dijk.

Burke was a legendary figure who didn't do things by halves. He famously fathered fathered 21 children, had 90 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. Born in Philadelphia, he began as a preacher and hosted a gospel radio show before moving into secular music. Early in life he was trained as a mortician and ran a chain of funeral parlours alongside his musical career. And what a career it was; at least 36 albums over a career that spanned 50 years, and moved from gospel to soul, blues, rock and country. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

While he remains one of the most influential artists to emerge from the early days of rock 'n' roll, he never had much in the way of major hits. Probably his signature tune is Cry to Me, which was later covered by the Rolling Stones and was a hit for Betty Harris, as well as much later appearing on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.

If there's one song penned by Burke that most people know however, it's Everybody Needs Somebody to Love, which he co-wrote in 1964 with Jerry Wexler and Bert Berns. Even if Wilson Pickett was to later record what many consider the definitive version, it endures as a magnificent example of the church's influence on the development of soul music.


Burke was no respecter of the artificial lines that divide "black music" from "white music", and some of his best work came in the last decade in collaboration with white blues/rock and country artists. His 2002 album Don't Give Up On Me, which won a Grammy for Best Blues Album, featured songs written by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello. His 2006 album Nashville was a collaboration with a number of country artists; the below track Valley of Tears remains one of my all-time favourite tracks, and a fitting way to end this tribute to him.

Cee-Lo's "F*** You" gets the Napoleon Dynamite treatment

The song F*** You by Cee-Lo (of Gnarls Barkley and Goodie Mob fame) is rapidly becoming a internet sensation; partly because people just love songs that unashamedly feature lots of cursing, but mostly because its such a fabulous song. Like any good viral smash, it has spawned a number of re-jigs and mash-ups of the music with different images, such as re-imagined movie scenes. This is my pick of the bunch - my favourite song of the moment mixed with a scene from one of my favourite movies. Watch for a few times when the lyrics and dance moves really match well together.

More funk from Finland

Finland is not a country I know a whole lot about, but I'm constantly surprised by the cool music that comes out of the place. Which should be too surprising I guess - cool music can come from anywhere - but in particular, the way that Finns have absorbed the essence of black diasporic music - funk, soul and jazz. I've written before about deep-funk instrumentalists The Soul Investigators, and the techno-jazz-funk of Jimi Tenor, even the surreal phenomenon of Finns singing bhangra.

A couple of other Helsinki-based artists have infiltrated my headspace recently. First up, The Stance Brothers, who play what they term "garage jazz"; 70s-style jazz underpinned by raw funk rhythms yet with an unmistakable modern feel. It's the brainchild of drummer and producer Teppo Makynen, and while the band lists members with names like "Isaiah Stance" and "Byron Breaks", I suspect those are merely aliases of Makynen himself, or maybe some of his Finnish mates.

Capricorn is from the new album from the "brothers", entitled Kind Soul.


Makynen is a busy boy; he's also the drummer for jazz combo The Five Corners Quintet:


More on the soul tip is Tuomo (surname Prättälä), a vocalist and keyboardist who does a nice line in retro-styled grooves. Some of his stuff recalls 90s acid jazz for me (think early Jamiroquai), but I'm particularly enamoured with this track First, which chugs along in a slinky groove with a particularly nice vocal performance; reminds me of Al Green, which is a significant compliment.