CLASSIC SOUL

Here's some soul music--two classics to get you into the weekend and help tighten up your wig. Watch these fantastic performers and see if they can lift your spirits.

Things have changed since this classic soul came out. These songs about love and happiness and respect made you want to move your feet. Now that we've all attained freedom and affluence, and bigotry is a thing of the past, listening to classic soul is like opening a time capsule from a distant world where people had to struggle to make ends meet, where class and wealth drove a wedge between people, where race limited people's opportunities and affected our politics (even Presidential campaigns!), where unpopular wars dragged on and on for spurious reasons. Not so different, come to think of it.

You can't beat soul.

Fellow blogger Expatbrian, over at World Gone Mad, set up a challenge. I'd pick two old favorites, and he'd do the same, and we'd have an old fashioned battle of the bands. Sounds like fun, eh? Be sure to check out his blog, too.

AL GREEN IS LOVE

The amazing Al Green. This is an early Valentine's Day gift, a special one-two punch of pure love and soul wrapped in a snappy 1970s jacket. There is nobody like Al. Coming after heroes Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and James Brown, Green embodied sweet soul music that was more silken than gritty, and, like Cooke, a combination of Sunday gospel and Saturday night club, the sacred crossing paths with the profane. Conflict makes a story, right? Currently, the Reverend Al gives Sunday services in Memphis, but this clip should take you back to the sweet sexy sinful Seventies.
Can you dig it?