A Song A Day

MUSIC FOR YOUR EAR HOLES selections by jason z Posting one song a day-ish. Started Saturday, September 12, 2009 Five Year Anniversary: Sept. 12, 2009 - Sept. 12, 2014 This site is a pet project to promote the featured songs to the music buying community. If any artist would like their post removed please contact me at the link below and I will remove it immediately. CONTACT ME

[jasonzsongs]

Sugar Minott - Good Thing Going. (c.1981)

A cover of Michael Jackson's "We've Got A Good Thing Going" from his 1972 album Ben.

[jasonzsongs]

Chuck Jackson - I Keep Forgettin' (c.1962)

"I Keep Forgettin'" is a classic R&B and soul song recorded by American singer Chuck Jackson and released as a single in 1962 on Wand Records. Written and produced by the legendary songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller alongside Gilbert Garfield, it is widely regarded as one of the pair's most innovative, dramatic, and rhythmically unique compositions.

--------

When Michael McDonald wrote his 1982 hit “I Keep Forgettin’,” he thought it was an original idea. He later realized the lyrics heavily mirrored Chuck Jackson’s 1962 R&B song of the same name.

To avoid copyright issues, McDonald’s publishers smoothly added the original writers, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, to the credits.

This sparked a major ripple effect. When Warren G and Nate Dogg sampled McDonald’s groove for their 1994 hip-hop classic “Regulate,” those 1960s soul legends got credited—and paid—all over again!

[jasonzsongs]

The Jaynetts - Sally Go 'Round The Roses (c.1963)

"Sally Go 'Round the Roses" is a hauntingly hypnotic 1963 hit song recorded by the Bronx-based girl group The Jaynetts. Written by Zelma Sanders and Lona Stevens, it reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains celebrated for its unusually spooky, ahead-of-its-time arrangement that foreshadowed psychedelic rock.

Artie Butler (Arranger/Conductor): Though credited as the arranger and conductor, Butler played almost all the instrumental tracks himself. He was the mastermind behind the song's famous, eerie atmosphere by manually adding a different layer of heavy reverb to each individual instrument and voice track.

[jasonzsongs]

Chilly - Dance With Me (c.1978)

[jasonzsongs]

Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Fire (c.1979)

[jasonzsongs]

The Cure - Six Different Ways

……(a return to) listening through the Cure discography in chronological order.  This is from their third album, 1985’s Head On The Door.

After recording one of their darkest albums, 1984's The Top, the Cure regrouped and shuffled their lineup, which changed their musical direction rather radically. While the band always had a pop element in their sound and even recorded one of the lightest songs of the '80s, "The Lovecats," The Head on the Door is where they become a hitmaking machine. The shiny, sleek production and laser-sharp melodies of "Inbetween Days" and "Close to Me" helped them become modern rock radio staples and the inspired videos had them in heavy rotation on MTV. The rest of the record didn't suffer for hooks and inventive arrangements either, making even the gloomiest songs like "Screw" and "Kyoto Song" sound radio-ready, and the inventive arrangements (the flamenco guitars and castanets of "The Blood," the lengthy and majestic intro to "Push," the swirling vocals on "The Baby Screams") give the album a musical depth previous efforts lacked. All without sacrificing an ounce of the emotion of the past, which songs as quietly desperate as "A Night Like This" and "Sinking" illustrate. With The Head on the Door, Robert Smith figured out how to make gloom and doom danceable and popular to both alternative and mainstream rock audiences. It was a feat the band managed to pull off for many years afterward, but never as concisely or as impressively as they did here. - allmusic.com

[jasonzsongs]

Naked Eyes - Voices In My Head (c.1983)

...an 80's deep cut

[jasonzsongs]

Gregory Isaacs - Cool Down The Pace (c.1982)

[jasonzsongs]

EPMD - You're A Customer (c.1988)

[jasonzsongs]

Alemayehu Eshete - Telantena zare ("Yesterday and Today") c.1974

Alemayehu Eshete Andarge was an Ethiopian singer, widely known as the "Abyssinian Elvis" for his dynamic performances and his fusion of traditional Ethiopian music with Western rock and roll influences. 

[jasonzsongs]

Ann Peebles - Come To Mama (c.1976)

[jasonzsongs]

Asha Puthli - Space Talk (c.1976)

Vocalist and songwriter Asha Puthli was well known in her native India before emigrating to New York in the late 1960s. She made a splash in the U.S. jazz world after appearing on Ornette Coleman's seminal Science Fiction in 1971. Further, she anticipated several major developments in Western popular music with her four albums for CBS Europe. 1976's The Devil Is Loose showcased her slinky vocals deployed above pulsing electronic beats and a bumping bassline in sexy Euro-disco. - allmusic.com

LA Times

[jasonzsongs]

Shintaro Sakamoto - Mask On Mask (c.2011)

[jasonzsongs]

One Way - Mr. Groove (c.1984)

[jasonzsongs]

The Merry-Go-Round - Time Will Show The Wiser (c.19767)

[jasonzsongs]

Booker T. & The M.G.'s - Good Groove

"Good Groove" by Booker T. & The M.G.s isn't a well-known original single but appears on compilations like Stax Instrumentals, released in 2003, as an unreleased track from the 1960s. While the group's famous hits like "Green Onions" came out much earlier (1962), "Good Groove" showcases their instrumental skill from that era, released later as part of unearthed material. 

[jasonzsongs]

Gyedu-Blay Ambolley - Adwoa (c.1975)