Today’s Artist
Curtis Mayfield 1942 – 1999
People get ready, there's a train a-coming.
Mayfield wrote about Black pride before anybody called it a movement. He fell through a stage light in 1990 and was paralyzed from the neck down. He kept recording. He sang lying on his back. The music never stopped. More →
Back of the Catalog Selection
30 sec
Who Did It Better
The Closer I Get to You
1978 Roberta Flack
1988 Luther Vandross
Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway circled intimacy in that space between friendship and something more. Luther Vandross sang the same closer I get duet but with a voice that understood the slow dance of two people finding their way toward each other through the quiet.
Today’s Record
Motownphilly
Motownphilly's back again, doin' a little east coast swing.
Dallas Austin gave them a beat that knocked. Boyz II Men answered with 30 sec ... four men from Philadelphia, singing New Jack Swing harmonies, introducing themselves to the world in under four minutes. They'd been discovered by Michael Bivins of New Edition, singing in a high school bathroom at lunch. The acoustics were surprisingly good. The talent was undeniable. Number three on the Hot 100. A debut that launched the best-selling R&B group in history.
Today’s Theme
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You’re Kidding, Right
John Legend was the first Black man to EGOT -- Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. A piano-playing choir boy from Springfield, Ohio who got his start singing hooks for Kanye West.
He was a Broadway producer before he was a film composer.
Soul in the Movies
Dazed and Confused 1993
Richard Linklater set Dazed and Confused on the last day of school in 1976 and the soundtrack is the most accurate seventies time capsule ever assembled. War's 'Why Can't We Be Friends' closes the film over the sunrise drive home. Alright, alright, alright. The summer was already ending.
Why can't we be friends? The song was asking. The film was answering. 