About this Playlist
A road trip playlist with enough music to drive the whole of Route 66 and no wonder as it spans the story of soul music from the late 1950’s to the early 80’s, actually 1983 and yes I could of took you all the way from Santa Monica to New York if I choose to carry on, but 1983 is a great time for a rest and catch up with the journey as here it takes a different direction, the late part of the 70’s to early 80’s saw some small new roads develop that ended up as the super highways of hip hop and house, also some not quite dead ends, maybe better described as roundabouts, the likes of go-go and electro, they came and went but people are still driving around them and their influences would be and still are felt for years to come.
No one can really say exactly where and when soul music stared, well it definitely wasn’t Santa Monica in 66, many years before and it’s obviously just a short trip from early R&B but a long winding road from the blues, I read a book a few years ago, which talked about ‘how did the blues become indigo’ and that statement interests me, how did new music genres begin and what sounds, styles and artists influenced them, this playlist is an exploration of this journey, as the rise of the two new predominant genres of my own youth, house and hip hop are directly related to the route that soul music took over 25 years, wrong turns and all you can take a short cut and listen to it all in 11 days, no stopping at the roadside or getting lost in the music, or you may never reach the end of the road.