Now is the time to put things right ...

One of the enduring themes of the Your Heart Out series is the dawning realisation that a particular individual has made a special contribution to the art of music. It's that moment you realise a certain name crops up time and again, and once this has registered you're off following more links all over the place.

In The Enormity of Small Things, the sixth issue, this particularly applied to arranger and songwriter Gerry Shury, who connected so much of the soul/disco/pop music made in the UK in the '70s, from the bubblegum of Biddu to the deep soul of Doris Duke via Ultrafunk and Polly Brown. So, in tribute to the artistry of Gerry Shury we are presenting this Now Is The Time mix of works related to this great man, focusing more on the soulful side, with some gems from Carl Douglas, Jimmy James, Jimmy Helms, Doris Duke, and so on. It's glorious stuff.

And, yes, Tina Charles is on there too. I had a crush on Tina when I was a kid, and watching this fantastic clip of her performing I'm On Fire with 5000 Volts I have to say my feelings haven't changed. What a voice!

Of course Tina is best known for her Biddu related work, which Gerry Shury sprinkled stardust over, and one of the songs Biddu reworked under his own name was Soul Coaxing, which itself was an instrumental adaptation of Michel Polnareff's Ame Caline. Polnareff is a big favourite around here, and if this TV performance of Ame Caline doesn't make you melt then get out of here ...