♫

Take your shoes off.
Dance if you want to.

Soul. Funk. Gospel. Blues. R&B. Every day, one song and artist and the story behind it.

NEW THIS WEEK →
Marvin Gaye
Today’s Artist
Marvin Gaye 1939-1984 (44)
Marvin Gaye. The prince of Motown who became its conscience. He was Berry Gordy's most bankable male star — then his brother came back from Vietnam and he couldn't go back to singing about moonlight. What's Going On was a protest album disguised as a seduction. It became Motown's best-selling album to that point. More on Marvin Gaye →
Who Did It Better
Let the Good Times Roll 1958

Ray Charles promised a good time on every single beat.

B.B. King slowed the same jump blues until joy felt like a sermon arriving. Let the good times rolled arrived on a slower train carrying more weight in every car and station it passed through.

Today's Record
Boogie Down 1974

Eddie Kendricks.

Time to boogie down. Leave worries at home. The music calls. Dance until sunrise. Boogie down is an instruction. Put on shoes and let the rhythm take control. Not complicated. Just move and let the night carry wherever it wants to go.

Hot Supper
Take your shoes off.
Dance if you want to.
Soul. Funk. Gospel. Blues. R&B. Every day, one song and artist and the story behind it.
NEW THIS WEEK →
Curtis Mayfield
Today’s Artist
Curtis Mayfield 1942–1999 (57)
People Get Ready, There’s a Train A-coming
Co-founded The Impressions and wrote People Get Ready a gospel song about the civil rights movement that felt like a train you could board. Then he went solo and made the acclaimed album Superfly. Remember the warning, Pusherman . A stage lighting rig fell on him in 1990. Paralyzed from the neck down. He recorded his last album lying on his back, one breath at a time. More →
Who Did It Better
A Song for You 1971
I love you in a place where there’s no space or time
Donny Hathaway laid every mistake at your feet hoping you would stay. Amy Winehouse sang the same confession knowing that she had nothing left to hide. A live studio take. No drums, no horns.
So, who sang A Song for You better?
Today’s Record
A Long Walk 2001
You got me twisting my hair and smiling all over the place
Jill Scott built A Long Walk the way someone builds a front porch. A place to sit. A place to stay awhile. Scott's delivery is unhurried, almost spoken, like she is talking to you across that porch.
The lyric finds romance in the ordinary. That was the neo-soul revolution. Not the chords. The permission to slow down and let the song breathe. Scott took that permission and built a house around it.
You’re Kidding, Right
Stevie Did It, What’s Your Excuse
Stevie Wonder has never seen a synthesizer, an orchestra, or a single instrument in his life. Yet in 1982 he invited Ray Kurzweil to his Los Angeles studio and asked one question: could computer technology recreate the sounds of real acoustic instruments?
The result was the K250. Introduced in 1984, the first instrument to make sampled sounds indistinguishable from the real thing. Wonder's prototype had Braille buttons. A blind man heard something that didn't exist and made the world build it. Rumor has it that he even used it to write Overjoyed in 1985.
0:00
0:00