New Musical Express (NME) is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a free publication, before becoming an online brand which includes its website and radio stations.
Earth, Wind & Fire is an American band whose music spans the genres of jazz, R&B, soul, funk, disco, pop, Latin, and Afro-pop. They are among the best-selling bands of all time, with sales of over 90 million records worldwide.
Northern soul is a music and dance movement that emerged in Northern England and the Midlands in the early 1970s. It developed from the British mod scene, based on a particular style of Black American soul music with a heavy beat and fast tempo.
Rare groove is music that is very hard to source or relatively obscure. Rare groove is primarily associated with funk, R&B and jazz funk, but is also connected to subgenres including jazz rock, reggae, Latin jazz, soul, rock music, northern soul, and disco. Vinyl records that fall into this category generally have high re-sale prices. Rare groove records have been sought by not only collectors and lovers of this type of music, but also by hip hop artists and producers.
David Edward Godin was an English fan of American soul music, who made a major contribution internationally in spreading awareness and understanding of the genre, and by extension African-American culture.
Peter Michael Tong is an English disc jockey who works for BBC Radio 1. He is the host of programmes such as Essential Mix and Essential Selection on the radio service, which can be heard through Internet radio streams, for his record label FFRR Records and for his own performances at nightclubs and music festivals. Tong has also worked as a record producer and is regarded as the "global ambassador for electronic music."
The Emotions are an American soul/R&B vocal group from Chicago. The group started out in gospel music but transitioned into R&B and disco music. The Emotions were named by VH1 as one of the 18 most influential girl groups of all time.
Record Mirror was a British weekly music newspaper between 1954 and 1991 for pop fans and record collectors. Launched two years after the NME, it never attained the circulation of its rival. The first UK album chart was published in Record Mirror in 1956, and during the 1980s it was the only consumer music paper to carry the official UK singles and UK albums charts used by the BBC for Radio 1 and Top of the Pops, as well as the US Billboard charts.
Brenda Russell is an American singer-songwriter, producer, and keyboardist. Russell has a diverse musical range which encompasses R&B, pop, soul, dance, and jazz. She has received five Grammy nominations.
Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew, better known by his stage name Plan B, is an English rapper, singer, songwriter, actor and filmmaker. He first emerged as a rapper, releasing his debut album, Who Needs Actions When You Got Words, in 2006. His second studio album, The Defamation of Strickland Banks (2010), was a soul and R&B album, and debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. He has also collaborated with other artists such as Chase & Status, most notably on the 2009 top ten single "End Credits".
The Blackbyrds are an American rhythm and blues and jazz-funk fusion group, formed in Washington, D.C., in 1973 and reformed in 2012 by Keith Killgo.
The Need of Love is the second studio album by American band Earth, Wind & Fire, released in November 1971 by Warner Bros. Records. The album reached No. 35 on the Billboard Top Soul Albums chart. The Need of Love would be the band's final album for Warner Bros. until 1993's Millennium on Reprise Records.
Soul Food Taqueria is the third studio album by American multi-instrumentalist and composer Tommy Guerrero. It was released on April 8, 2003, by Mo' Wax Records.
Evolver is the third studio album by American singer John Legend, released by GOOD Music and Sony Music Entertainment on October 28, 2008, in the United States and on October 20 in the United Kingdom. It features guest appearances by Kanye West, Brandy, Estelle and Andre 3000, among others.
Wax Poetics is a global music platform for music collectors, with its roots as a music magazine dedicated to vintage and contemporary jazz, funk, soul, Latin, hip-hop, reggae, blues, and R&B in the crate-digger tradition; the name of the magazine is itself an allusion to vinyl records. Its first incarnation was in regular circulation between 2001 and 2017.
David Nathan is an English-born biographer, journalist, authority on soul music, and singer. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was the co-founder of the Soul City record label and a contributing editor to Blues & Soul magazine. Living in the US between 1975 and 2009, he wrote several biographies of musicians as well as hundreds of articles and liner notes, and founded the website soulmusic.com. He has also recorded and performed as a jazz and blues singer, both under his own name and as his alter egoNefer Davis.
Let It Rock was a monthly British music magazine, which featured lengthy critical articles, record reviews, and feature articles covering a wide spectrum of popular music, including soul, reggae, and blues. Between October 1972 and December 1975, 35 issues of the magazine were published in London, by Hanover Books, sometime in Berners Street W1. The publisher was Peter Shepherd, who also published other music publications including Folk Review and Country Music. Dave Laing was the founding editor; John Pidgeon took over as editor in October 1973. The reviews editor was Simon Frith, and Charlie Gillett was consultant editor. Other contributors included John Peel, Lester Bangs, Michael Gray, Mick Gold, Mick Houghton, David Downing, Gary Herman, Idris Walters, Karl Dallas, Ian Hoare and Phil Hardy, and the soul music column was written by Pete Wingfield. The initial art editor was John Finn. Designers and illustrators included Barney Bubbles, George Snow, Kevin Sparrow and Peter Till. The magazine struggled to achieve consistent sales of 20,000 and closed due to market forces. Music writers David Hepworth and Barney Hoskyns have called Let It Rock influential, and suggested that it was the precursor of such music publications as Q magazine and Mojo.
Stuart Colin Matthewman, also known as Cottonbelly, is an English songwriter, record producer and musician. With Sade Adu, Paul S. Denman, and Andrew Hale, he gained worldwide fame as the guitarist/saxophonist of the band Sade. Stuart is also a member of Sweetback, and was one half of Twin Danger.
Echoes is a monthly magazine of soul, jazz, R&B, hip hop and reggae. It was founded as a weekly newspaper, Black Echoes, in 1976 and later changed its name to just Echoes. It became a monthly magazine in 2000.
Andrew Alexander "Mike" Terry was an American saxophonist, songwriter, arranger, producer and musical director. His baritone sax solos feature on the breakthrough hits of Martha and the Vandellas, and The Supremes. As a member of the Funk Brothers he performed on thousands of Motown recordings from 1960 to 1967, including at least seven US #1 hits. As was Motown's policy at the time, none of the studio musicians were credited by name. Terry was the musical arranger of the 1966 hit "Cool Jerk" by The Capitols, and later became a record producer, with partners including George Clinton, Sidney Barnes, and Jack Ashford.
