Today’s Artist
Mavis Staples 1939 –
I know a place, ain't nobody crying, ain't nobody worried.
Staples sang with her family in the Staple Singers, carrying the message of civil rights through every note. She kept recording into her 80s. Prince produced her. Bob Dylan proposed. She said no. She kept singing for the movement. More →
Back of the Catalog Selection
30 sec
Who Did It Better
Ain't No Sunshine
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
1971 Bill Withers
1972 Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin found the empty space Withers left for the silence to breathe. She filled every corner with organ, horns, and choir answering like testimony. She reharmonized the whole progression and turned the word I Know from raw grief into a declaration of certainty instead.
He counts the hours in the dark. Each "I know" lands like a stone dropped in still water. The ripples are the only proof he is still breathing.
Today’s Record
Rock The Boat
Rock the boat, don't tip it over
Aaliyah was twenty-two when she shot the video for 30 sec in the Bahamas. She died in a plane crash leaving the set. The song -- a slow-creeping groove produced by Timbaland -- became a memorial. Work the middle, work the middle. The beat sways like water. The vocal floats above it. Number fourteen on the Hot 100. A song about pleasure, forever shadowed by what came after.
Today’s Theme
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You’re Kidding, Right
Denise LaSalle built her own record label, store, and publishing company in the 1970s. She once held a club owner at gunpoint until he paid what he owed her for a show. Don't mess with Denise.
She wasn't just a singer -- she was a businesswoman who would pull a gun to get her money.
Soul in the Movies
Angela Bassett played Tina Turner and was nominated for an Oscar. Laurence Fishburne played Ike with a menace that made you want to reach through the screen. The film tracks Tina's escape from one of the most famously abusive relationships in music history and her improbable comeback. 'Nutbush City Limits' -- Tina's own song about the tiny Tennessee town where she was born -- shows her at the peak of her Ike-era powers.
Nutbush. The city limits were never wide enough to hold her. 