Bless The Day #7: What's Wrong With Groovin'

Letta Mbulu singing ‘What’s Wrong with Groovin’’ is one of the most glorious, defiant performances in the history of pop. She challenges directly, demanding to know why she can’t be left to be free, to live her life, to sing, to dance, and why the hell should anyone try to put her down, keep her down, follow her around, spy on her, talk about her, and try to stop her having fun and being herself.

Bless The Day #6: Righteous Life

‘Righteous Life’ by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 is one of those special songs, one which is guaranteed to generate a warming inner glow, with its rolling waves of thermal bass, shimmering piano, and the drums propelling things along, while the singers seem to share deep insights, and if the words are pleasantly elusive in terms of meaning they have just the right feel of poetry, politics and spirituality to suit the most reflective of moods.

Bless The Day #5: Stop This World

A casually caustic Mose Allison singing ‘Stop This World’ is something which seems very much of the moment, what with the way he suggests someone stopping this world, and letting him off, because there’s too many pigs in the same trough, too many buzzards sitting on the fence, and none of it is making any sense. Well, it’s easy to see where he’s coming from, and how it might be applied to the world today.

The song itself is a perfect example of Mose’s lightness of touch, the way he uses his wit as a weapon, with raised eyebrows and a studied nonchalance of manner. Mose and his piano are accompanied here by bluesy horns, which add to the drama. He may be down but he’s still the master of ironic inflections and acute observations delivered in a deadpan and detached wry way, the singer of songs which sting just as much as someone ranting and raving, yelling and hollering.

Bless The Day #4: Lazy Afternoon

‘It’s A Lazy Afternoon’ as sung by Lucy Reed is quite something. Discreetly accompanied by Dick Marx on piano and Johnny Frigo on bass doing the bare minimum beautifully, her precise articulation, the exquisite enunciation, the unforced projection, everything, it’s all so subtly sensual and seductive, the mood is incredibly dreamy, so intimate, so tempting, so indolent. When Lucy suggests spending a lazy afternoon with her, only a fool would hesitate.

She really works wonders with John Latouche’s carefully chosen words, his very vivid imagery, with those beetle bugs zooming, and the tulip trees blooming, the farmer leaving his reaping, the speckled trout no longer leaping, the daisies running riot amid the quiet. You really feel as though you are there, with Lucy offering her hand, and with that look in her eye. There’s absolutely no need to answer is there?

Bless The Day #3: Come On Come Out

‘Come On Come Out’ is a song by the band Laugh, and it features a passage that is one of the most gripping in pop music. For, about halfway through, the singer seems at the end of his tether, and snarls in a dangerously low voice, through clenched teeth no doubt, that we know he has no money, that it seems he has too much time, but that doesn’t mean he has time for everybody, and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to live his life. It is compelling, startling stuff.

Then it’s time to lose it altogether, and he barks savagely that there’s too much time, with echoes of the good Captain’s Clear Spot, coincidentally or not, and that there’s too much space, and how everything he does is just one big disgrace, and that everywhere he goes he just gets in a state and then, when he goes to sleep, he has dreams that he hates. It’s a riveting performance, a graphic depiction of how carefree dole dreams may mutate into doldrums and the darkest of days.

Bless The Day #2: African Sun

‘African Sun’ is a composition by Abdullah Ibrahim which comes as close as anything in music to defining something spiritual, whether in a jazz context or in a wider one. It is a work which seems to have within it the very warmth of the sun, but also a wonderful mix of pride, defiance, celebration, protest. At just over six minutes in length it seems absurdly short, and leaves the listener wanting to hear it over and over again.

The track opens with a minute-or-so of rippling, rolling wave-like piano playing, with a suggestion of shimmering percussion in the background, then boom, the bass comes in, soon followed by Kippie Moeketsi on the saxophone, soaring like some exotic bird, and all the while Abdullah Ibrahim, or Dollar Brand as he was when he first recorded it, is playing a series of rhythmic piano patterns, often deep and bass heavy. The ripples return at the four-minute mark before a final flourish of rhythmic perfection for the final minute or so, with Kippie on saxophone singing sweetly, and the listener likely to be found dancing on air, dancing wherever they are.

Bless The Day #1: People That's Why

‘People That’s Why’ by the Idle Few is a perennial Northern Soul favourite, ideal for filling dancefloors and for home listening. It is a song all about universal fellowship, helping those less well-off, materially or spiritually. It remains gloriously uplifting, spirit revivifying. It is a burst of blue-eyed soul, thrilling and arresting right from the opening attack of drums, the heraldic fanfare of brass, and is at times a veritable cavalry charge of a track and at others a beautiful piece of sincere testimony.