Formally, Florida Funk is a sequel to Texas Funk and Midwest Funk, Jazzman Records’ other collections of R&B rarities from the late ’60s and early ’70s. Informally, it’s part of a much longer list of recent regional funk reissues. There’s Southern Funkin’ on the Beat Goes Public label, Funky Funky Chicago and Funky Funky Detroit [...]

I saw the Pogues play only once, in 1989, as frontman Shane MacGowan was descending into drunkenness and a certain Tim Burton film was dominating the box office. Soused beyond measure, MacGowan staggered around the stage with little interest in singing, belching out a slurred and incoherent rant instead. The only words I could make [...]

Doris Duke’s only major hit was “To The Other Woman (I’m The Other Woman)”, a country-soul song that sits right at the border separating Millie Jackson from Tammy Wynette. It was also the final track on 1969’s I’m A Loser, one of those albums with a mystique that threatens to render the record itself anticlimactic. [...]

Some remember Ray and Dave Davies for those wry English singles of the late ’60s: “Waterloo Sunset”, “Sunny Afternoon”, “Autumn Almanac” and the like, songs as steeped in music-hall tradition as they are in rock ‘n’ roll. Some associate them with the driving garage rock that first made their band, the Kinks, famous — early [...]