It's interesting to ponder the world of nearly 60 years ago, especially since we still hold such an era in high regard. 1960 brought us the first glimpse of the Neoliberalist optimism that no longer serves us more than a half century later alongside with such advents like Birth Control & The Flintsones. Music critics look at it as a fallow period, not reflecting the true spirit of the time. Granted, the male-centric narrative that Rock & Roll in particular took a nap from 1959 through the British Invasion is a ridiculous, misogynistic perspective. In 1960, the world was a veritable oyster for many women, especially of color, in a way the repressive 1950's had not been, albeit with it's own challenges to conquer. The amazing pioneers, fresh and veteran below, enrichen a legacy of women artists providing joy despite dim-witted assessments of their contributions to music history. Hopefully the range keeps you entertained for the next 90 minutes.

Can you believe it's 2019? I can't! The tides of time seem to shift and be stuck all at once, and we find ourselves with nearly a decade slipped into the rearview mirror as we launch headlong into a future. What can we count on? What can we trust? I always find grounding in music, and found myself looking for songs that seemed to answer with a sense of belonging, purpose, understanding and caring for the first mix I've compiled in 2019. We're constantly carving out an existence that's finding the rose growing up through the concrete. I hope these tunes inspire you to be thankful for yourself, and what you have and not to fear asking calling in what you need to move further into the person you wish to be. Happy New Year, 2019 y'all.

We arrive to 50 years since 1969! As we look to our past and see mirror reflections to our present, we see that so many artistic strides in popular music were courtesy of Black women. Like our current moment as well, the 1960's saw the biggest pioneers from the beginning of the decade, and even some from many decades previous, still turning over new leaves as the seasons passed. The reality however, alongside the new "silent majority" election of conservative Richard Nixon, FM radio as a growing frequency again became the domain of white men. What was new on the radio & in the national Top 40 excluded some of the biggest draws of the Camelot era. In a world where we spend a lot of time over-viewing the accomplishments of masculine of center artists, my mission as I approach a decade of blogging and sharing Soul and R&B adjacent music of the mid-century, I want to continue to highlight voices that continue to receive far less recognition due to our societal race & gender politics. So sit back and enjoy this 2 hour long toast to 50 years ago as we overview our own last decade of existence.

I think I say, perhaps snidely, that I didn't come into loving Sixties Soul Music via Punk, as basically every white DJ I've ever met has. That's mostly because I'm a Black Queer of mixed ancestry that was born in 1982. In 1982, names that had set stages as diverse as The Apollo, Ed Sullivan, American Bandstand and Monterey Pop in the swinging decade that ended 12 years before my birth were still headliners and hit makers on Black Radios. As Pop music tends to throw away those that aren't white men very quickly, the appreciation of artistic growth is something prized in Black Art spaces unlike the mainstream. As Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and even Ella Fitzgerald went from Big Band to Uptown Soul as the 1940's became the mid 1960's, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight did the same from soul to funk and quiet storm. With this, we visit a 30 year younger version of me, starting his music education with some soul survivors.

If you're anything like me, all you need really is one spin of Christmas Music to be completely over it. Don't get me wrong, one of my earliest mixes dealt with the Christmas Conundrum. But listening to the same gaggle of tunes for 30 or more days is bound to grate on the more rational nerves. Also, it's Sagittarius season! And Jupiter is in Sagittarius too! So It seemed this season, Given it's the sign that rules the hips and butt, it's time for a full on dance mix, no asses in the seat style. This holiday season, I hope that you remember in these tumultuous times to find joy in little nooks and crannies of existence. That joy is a gift that can be a word of kindness, a smile at the appropriate time, or dancing it out with your favorites. May this mix get you through the end of this helluva year with some soul in your step, and as always, thank you for listening and sharing alongside me.

9 years ago today was the day I made my first online music blog post that's pointed me in the direction of being a Vinyl DJ. As a measure of thanks this week, you're getting an earlier than normal mix. 2018 has been a pretty tumultuous year hasn't it? In a way, the trends of our time echo back pretty strongly to the year 50 years previous. A neoconservative president, Richard Nixon, won on the tide of a "Silent Majority." The tenor that the Nixon years gave us has set the background for the evolution of our popular culture. In response to that, heightened activism including Black Power, Women's Liberation and Gay Rights came to the forefront. Meanwhile we get to go more in depth with the women that made music magic in the R&B realms that year. So sit back, give thanks to the women that fought and still fight behind the mic, in the chambers of power and in the streets.

Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson met at a Harlem Church, and soon fell in love and married. At first they tried their hand at being a singer-songwriting duo. Although they had promise with their early recordings, they also were an ultra productive pairing in terms of tunesmiths. They also made fast friends with former Ikette Josephine Armstead. To keep the money flowing for all three, they oft sat down at the piano together. Distinctive from the start, the trio of writers really excelled at churning out intense "Big City" soul that was a natural extension of the "Uptown Soul" created by their contemporaries in the Brill Building, while adding melodic sophistication and a streetwise sense of gossip, celebration and frankly, soulfulness to the genre. I stayed away from the early huge studio hits that they were known for with Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, and concentrated on the fruits of their collaborations from the mid-60s and some Motown obscurities. Enjoy!

People really love Fall. It's interesting because I commented a few weeks ago to someone that all of the celebration of beauty of this particular season is also a celebration of death. As September folds into Oct to Nov to December vibrant trees and flowers react to the waning sunlight and shorter days in the Northern Hemisphere and produce vibrant leaves. The occasionally still warm days lead to crisp nights and cold mornings, and the darker longer hours overnight tend to make us want to cuddle up in safety as well. That seeking of safe shelter can be a boon to intimacy. There's nothing that makes you feel more alive than experiencing a la petite mort. And so we have the inspiration for our latest mix. In the liminal space between Summer and Winter, we have a opaque spread of Jazz, Pop, Lounge Soul and Popcorn. Softer, more intimate, more for your slower dancing to get closer with someone after a (spiked?) Cider? Enjoy!

It's been awhile since we've had a Venus Retrograde and me analyzing Astrology via music. However, this potent Season of the Witch in which we'll be dealing with Venus in Scorpio retracing steps back to Venus in Libra, it seemed high time to pull together some songs to help us descend into the darker corners of our desires before we re-emerge back into the light in about 40 Days, after 40 long long nights. Listen for songs that speak to you on this journey, journal them, chew on the lyrics that hit you between the eyes, and hopefully you'll find comfort to guide you to your deepest desires as we navigate this season of shifting tides of Scorpio and Libra winds and whims.

Berry Gordy was slightly notorious for being adverse to seeking outside material for hit songs for his singers. Very rare during the Motown classic hit era were any of the major hits for artists from the pens of someone that wasn't attached to the Motown Family. However, every once in a while, be it a dance craze album, a tribute LP, something chock full of standards or mere expediency, an outsourced cover song made its way into the recording studio. Notably the practice was very rare before 1965, so the earlier covers were done by top flight acts. As the label expanded, and demands on the songwriters in-house grew, the more covers would fill in on LPs, and sometimes escape as singles for artists both big named and small. We have 33 examples of how Motown loved some of the songs not created within the walls of Hitsville U.S.A. for your listening pleasure.

Nobody really warned me that summer ends right after Labor Day in the Pacific Northwest. As my mind tries to cope to the (to me) premature weather, I've overlooked the phenomenon of weather in our music, starting with Rain. The majority of the time songs about the rain are equated with emotions, dreariness, depression and frankly a safe way to cry in public. But every once in a while, and more often than you think, there's something very romantic, refreshing and carefree about songs that prize the rain as an environmental setting just as, if not moreso, romantic than Sunlight or Snow. So as we dip further into Fall, crawl up with more than 90 minutes of the stormy passions of rain as music.

In terms of Pop Culture, 1962 is an interesting year. In a lot of ways, it's the first full fledged year of "The Sixties" as we currently conceptualize it. Out were tailfins on cars, up were beehives. Lucille Ball returned to television minus Desi Arnaz. And, as a little nugget, two Aries superstars battled it out for career defining roles. There was a missile crisis and The Marvelettes and Mary Wells literally bankrolled The Sound Of Young America. Freedom Riders took to The South and dodged bullets, while Phil Spector really started to build the sonic wall on his productions. Notably, the rollicking of Gospel started to really replace the strut of the blues in R&B popular recordings. So for yet another year review, we have what was new for '62. 40 songs carry you back 56 years for a mini movie for transistor radio remembrance studies as we all head back to school. Enjoy!

I definitely spend more time in terms of creating mixes that explore the vast contributions that women, particularly Black women, have made to popular music. Every once in a while tho, I feel a bit guilty for ignoring the legacy of the legions of handsome men that worked tirelessly in the studio and stage crafting musical arts. This time I decided to affix on my own romantic ideal. I do have a penchant for male singers that are smooth as silk boxers with their performances. The legion of Baritones, Tenors and Falsettos that set my Mid Century Heart Ablaze always excelled at a mid-tempo jam, or a low and slow number. So as we wind down Summer and think of new teachers to have (in)appropriate crushes on, here's a good cruise through some sophisticated sounds offered by some of the finest voices you know and don't know in 60's soul.

Picture it, Philadelphia. 1963. Okay, it's Leo season, and time for me to round up another pioneering set of songwriters. ​Given the season of the lion, I had to pay tribute to one member of Royal Soul. But you can't really go into the spectacle that is the influential career of Kenneth Gamble (born August 11th, 1943) without paying attention to the work his Aries city-of-brotherly-love contemporary and eventual partner Leon Huff (born April 8th, 1942) had in the same city before they joined forces, and the magic they crafted together. This mix serves to prove that their influence was vast long before they became critical darlings, with 40 songs that saw the light of day before 1972. I hope you enjoy as we roll up on wishing Kenny Gamble a happy 75th Birthday.

It's really telling as I searched the wide web of inter that I couldn't seem to find an image of a Pre-1970's Van McCoy. However, by age 18 he was songwriting and performing. By age 22, he had ownership of his own record label under his belt, while placing songs with faces as fresh as The Shirelles and as time tested as Ruth Brown and Nat King Cole. Matched up against writers and producers like Burt Bacharach, Teddy Randazzo, Goffin & King, Mann & Weil among others, he didn't score as many massive hits, though there's plenty memorable in his catalog that oft revived the fortunes for sagging chart stars such as Gladys Knight & The Pips and Barbara Lewis. His biggest rewards came in the 1970's, as we all know "The Hustle" but it wasn't long after that he broke through to the mainstream that he died at a young 39 years old, 39 years ago this month. So we look back at 40 of his labors you may have not heard, from the wealth of creativity & connections he forged during the 1960's.

I've mined the territory of checking in with women were doing in the recording studios through some random assortment of years during the 1960s. 1964 is an interesting year to ponder. Of course it's mostly remembered as the beginning of the British Invasion that swept many popular U.S. Pop stars off the Billboard Hot 100. What's often forgotten is it's the year that saw Mary Wells's, The Shangri-Las and The Dixie Cups scoring massive #1 hits, nevermind The Supremes scoring #3 hits in just 6 months of the year. The largest number of women since World War II were staying in the workforce, and determining their life directions alongside the intersectional fight for Civil Rights. It's no accident that there was still a plethora of female artists exercising their craft in 1964. So we pile into a brand new Mustang worth of tunes with veterans & upstarts of what was fresh, swinging and soulful from assorted women in the recording year in this huge transitional year in society.

I'm a firm believer in having to remember where you've been to see where you're going. To root and meditate on our history is to build for a stronger future. With that in mind, Who paved the way for us that get to reclaim the Queer label? Who were some of the musicians? Luckily those that would be seen through our modern understandings of Queerness proves that the collective we outside of binaries, patriarchy and heterosexuality have always existed. There's a few openly queer survivors on this mix. There's also a number of voices that sadly weren't able to reach a point that their lives were to be as beautiful as the music they created. Alongside them are some camp and queer reading recordings by some straight folks in one mix that is very close to my heart. Hug it out homos, it's gonna be alright if we stick together. (LGBT Ancestors and Elders of Song Are denoted by asterisk in the tracklist)*