This one features the one and only Stevie Wonder.
And I also often like to start a mix with the first track from one of my favorite albums.
So we start with "Smile Please" off Stevie's Fulfillingness' First Finale, my very favorite of his albums. Rock snobs always say his best album is "Innervisions", for "important" tracks like "Livin' For The City."
These are people who probably laugh at Kool & The Gang.
It's actually because of tracks like "Livin' In the City" that Innervisions is my least favorite of his great 70s albums....as great as it is. Talking Book is another great one, and another one I remember so well for being in my parent's record collection when I was a kid is Songs In the Key Of Life, but it's hardly fair to compare as it's a double album that spilled over to an additional EP called "A Something's Extra", which had 4 songs:"Saturn", "Ebony Eyes, "All Day Sucker" and "Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)".
Fulfillingness' First Finale was recorded after Stevie suffered injuries in a near fatal car crash, and the tone of the album feels even more reflective and personal than usual. To my ears, it flows perfectly, feeling like one long piece. "Smile Please" is a perfect mellow opener, warm and inviting.
From there, another laid back 70s track, Kool & The Gang's rich instrumental "Summer Madness", sampled on many a hip hop track.
Speaking earlier of car crashes, 60s soul singer Billy Stewart died far too young, driving his car into a river when he was only 32. Before that, his biggest hit, outside an amazing scat version of the Gershwin standard "Summertime" was "I Do Love You", which is here.
Next, classic reggae song "Queen Of The World" from Lloyd and Claudette, Aretha Franklin covering the Beatles with "The Long And Winding Road", and the early Supremes track "When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes".
Then I have a nice acoustic version of The Who's ""Behind Blue Eyes" off one of the Scoop albums of Pete Townshend home demos. It's nice to hear Who songs sung by the guy who wrote them, after the Roger Daltrey versions have become overly familiar. "Sawan Ka Mihna (Milan)" by Lata Mangeshkar is off one of the many excellent Bollywood compilations I've collected.
Also not in English: Stevie Wonder singing "My Cherie Amour" in Italian. Does it sound even more romantic this way?
Then we have "The Three Sunrises" from U2's mid 8os Wide Awake In America EP. I remember, as an earnest Catholic high school teen when it came out, blasting this album in my car. Once these guys found irony, shortly after I did, we lost each other forever.
The mysterious and perpetually mask-faced MF Doom's "Dead Bent" is followed by the wonderful "I Believe In Miracles' by the obscure Jackson Sisters; contemporaries of, but no relation to, the Jackson 5.
After we go "Back To The Lab" with Tony D, I have a charming BBC-recorded cover by The Zombies of The Supremes, with "When Then Lovelight Starts Shining Through Her Eyes."
The old blues standard "St. James Infirmary" gets an nice old-timey reading by The Harlem Chocolates. "All Blues" by Miles Davis off his Kind of Blue album tones things down a bit.
This is followed by a nice jazzy cover of "The Long and Winding Road" again, this time by Ray Charles with The Count Basie Orchestra.
Don Covay, besides being a criminally underappreciated soul singer, is often cited as a primary influence on Mick Jagger. Which is why I followed his "The Usual Place" with The Rolling Stones' "Loving Cup".
I don't think the Jagger/Richards songwriting team gets nearly enough credit as lyricists, and this song, outside the gospel piano and back-up singing, acoustic guitar, spot-on horns and maybe the most soulful singing Mr. Jagger ever committed to record, has some of my favorite lyrics to any Stones song ever.
I doubt they have a more direct, and clever, love song in their whole catalog. Just one drink from your loving cup and he "falls down drunk". Is Mick Jagger really so smitten that he would "love to spill the beans with you til dawn"?
If you listen to no more than one song on this mix, listen to this one, and play it a few times in a row, as I just did.
The only song that could follow, and end, this mix is a rare live version of the best love song Stevie ever wrote, "You & I". Excuse me as a I grab a tissue.
