Benny Gordon - Gonna Give Her All The Love I Got (Wand 1188)

Gonna Give Her All The Love I Got

BENNY GORDON 1932-2008

As the best working R&B band in New York (ranked #1 by the Daily News throughout the sixties, Benny told me), The Soul Brothers influenced other up and coming outfits (like The Young Rascals) as the house band at Trudi Heller's fabled club in Greenwich Village.

This smoking version of Jimmy Ruffin's 1967 hit, blows the original right out of the water, in my opinion. According to Benny, that's King Curtis leading the horn section.

Play it loud, folks.

Fare thee well, my friend.

Charles Brown - Christmas In Heaven (Jewel 814)

Christmas In Heaven

With the possible exception of Nat 'King' Cole, the first person I think of when it comes to Christmas music is Charles Brown . The composer of two yuletide standards, Merry Christmas Baby and Please Come Home For Christmas, his music will continue to be heard as long as people still hang up 'dem socks. Despite the seemingly infinite cover versions of both of those songs, Brown's originals are still the best I've heard (although neither of those King 45 versions appear to be available here in the digital age!).

Both of them get a lot of play in the ol' jukebox this time of year, though, as does this great tune we have here. Again written by Charles (with an obligatory co-writer's credit given to Jewel label owner, Stan Lewis), it was cut in 1970.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

They're Here Too...

That's right y'all...

"Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog infringes upon the copyrights of others. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message..."

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Affected URLs:

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Which was my appreciation of the late great Levi Stubbs.

Is nothing sacred?