A tucked-away treasure, the Meters never found their own fame like Booker T. and the MGs. No matter. Let it be our secret. Our funky, funky secret.

NICK DERISO: A crazy collision between the brassy sound of Rebirth and the great grooves of Parliament Funkadelic, LA Funk Brass Band is a party actually taking place on the bandstand. That makes sense, considering this funky roadhouse choir features a rotating set of 50-or-so performers with roots from northeasternRead More

Irma Thomas, whose Louisiana legend of a voice has darkened into a more expressive place, is taking a similar career tack. The new “Simply Grand,” in fact, finds Thomas moving deeper into the emotional underpinnings of her best work at a time when safer environs would probably be more profitable.Read More

From the first chunky guitar chords, the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” is a different kind of a song about getting dumped, and still loving her anyway, and thinking to yourself — and then saying out loud — that you’ll wait for as long as it takes for her to return,Read More

Philip Bailey should have been a star in his own right. Here’s a guy with a falsetto as divine as Russell Tompkins, Jr.’s, served as co-lead singer of the superstar soul group Earth, Wind and Fire and used star producers to handle his first two solo albums. And yet, allRead More

NICK DERISO: The blue-eyed soul template has been copied so many times that it can feel like a faded and calculating conceit, something singers do simply to attact a demo. Unless you’re Eric Lindell, a native of San Mateo, Calif., who not only aspires to a Van Morrison/Delbert McClinton-level ofRead More

by Nick Deriso Hall and Oates are, of course, the poster boys for what happens when hair gel meets R&B. Funny thing is, they were originally anything but polished. Hall had reportedly been in an early Philly band with Thom Bell, later a central figure in that city’s R&B legacy.Read More

NICK DERISO: “The Ultimate Session” might not completely live up to the billing. Forgive us, however, if we cherish its sense of hip-shaking fun, anyway. Assembled are a who’s-who group of New Orleans musicians who played nearly five decades before with the likes of Little Richard, Fats Domino and ProfessorRead More

NICK DERISO: “I’m Having Fun” arrives as advertised. That is to say, it’s a bubbly, rollicking party record, featuring King Curtis — the Fort Worth native was one of the last of the great R&B saxists — shaking a bandstand to its foundations while keyboardist Champion Jack Dupree lays inRead More

NICK DERISO: Sam Cooke, for all his power and grace as a singer, established this strikingly brief legacy during the time of the Hit Single. Which meant Cooke’s most well-known albums of the early 1960s were often dotted with dated filler, tunes in the Broadway style of the day orRead More