You don’t need me to tell you Isaac Hayes was the man.
From 1973, here’s Black Moses putting his inimitable stamp on Bill Withers’s “Use Me,” from one of the greatest live recordings I’ve ever heard.
Isaac Hayes - Use Me from Live At The Sahara Tahoe (insound / amazon CD / amazon mp3 / itunes)

For me, this Summertime Jam is all about two things: the sweetly nostalgic lyrics on the sung verses, and the really quite inappropriate lyrics on the rapped verses.
The rap lyrics aren’t that inappropriate for the song itself — it’s the usual: Snoop rapping about driving around drinking champagne, Lil’ Kim mentioning how she travels to [...]

Hey, people, listen — I’ve been trying really hard these past 38 years to keep abreast of matters. I don’t know how this happens. It’s possibly that there simply is so so very much beauty.
What happened was I somehow missed out on Millie Jackson until recently. But the discovery process since then has been delightful.
Today’s [...]

It had to happen sooner or later — the Jazz category. I wouldn’t say it’s the jazziest jazz, but Ronny Jordan counts as jazz so jazz it is. (Jazz.)
I’ve resisted delving deeply into jazz for fear that once I dive in I will never come out. (I’m saving that for my 50s.) So I only [...]

OK, one more song I first heard on a good mix. I heard this on this mix I found on waxdj.com by a fella named Fat AL. The mix has a title you can’t say to your mom and the mixing itself is iffy, but the song selection (it also includes Monday’s Vegetable) is very [...]

As long as I’m on the subject of artist-compiled mixes, here’s something that good ol’ Annie told me about on her entry in the DJ-Kicks series, which is a really screwed-up album (in a very good way).
Who knows? Without Annie, maybe I would have gone my whole life without knowing that there was an entire [...]

Discovered this one via the Late Night Tales that Belle & Sebastian did. I’m a huge fan of the Late Night Tales (formerly Another Late Night) series, where artists make CD-length mixes meant for late-night listening (but suitable for any old time).
I’m a big fan of the mixes by B&S, Air, and Zero 7. I’ve [...]

You know you’ve secured your place in music history when you get a beat named after you.
Rest peacefully, Mr. Diddley. When you were just twenty-two, you didn’t mind dyin’, so I figure you don’t mind now. Thanks for writing one of the most hardcore, dangerous one-chord love songs ever.
Bo Diddley - Who Do You Love
[righteous [...]

I love me a crackpot, and when I saw Cody ChesnuTT take the stage opening for The Roots some years ago, I knew I had found another one. He had more delay on his vocals than Gibby Haynes, and he confounded pretty much everybody in the Fillmore.
His album is hit and miss, but the hits [...]

This edition of Woo-fer Wednesday is brought to you by the concept of the sequel record. I have an abiding love for sequel records and answer records, and this is one of my favorite pairs.
There used to be some great AM radio in the Santa Cruz-Monterey area. Probably because the expectations for ratings were so [...]