
Cold War Kids are set to release "Mine is Yours" tomorrow (buy here ), but you can stream the album over here . The guys will be hitting the road pretty hard, so make sure and catch them as they make the rounds. Check out their videos below live at Third Man Studios. Cold War Kids - Change Gonna Come (live Sam Cooke Cover)

Today would have been the truly incomparable Sam Cooke's -called the Inventor of Soul -80th birthday. He started singing in soul groups and ended up in the influential Soul Stirrers . Eventually he took that gospel sound into secular music, first in 1956 with a reworked gospel song called "Lovable" released under the pseudonym Dale Cooke in order to hide his identity from gospel fans who might not like his foray into secular music. He left the Soul Stirrers in 1957 to pursue pop music. [...]

Today would have been Sam Cooke's 80th birthday. With a voice like an angel, the singer, songwriter, label owner and pop idol left behind a body of work that to day this includes some of the most classic and influential songs of all time. From the songs of longing and desire ("Cupid," "You Send Me," "Bring It On Home," "Another Saturday Night" and "Only Sixteen") and the good time classics ("Twisting The Night Away," "Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha," "Having A Party"), to songs like "Chain Gang," "Wonderful World," and "A Change Is [...]

"(Sam) Cooke had an enormous natural talent -- but he mined a narrow vein, one in which restraint was prized over embellishment. So Cooke sang direct and clean lines, never pushing or straining his voice, always perfectly in time and tone with thoughtfully arranged instrumentals. No flailing, cathartic vocal runs, no bursts of horns, just precision filigreed with the occasional, sighing 'whoa-oh-oh-oh' like the one that punctuates the chorus of 'You Send Me.'" --Jacob Ganz, Sam Cooke At 80: The Career That Could Have Been , 1/21/11 Sam Cooke would've [...]
Jan 21, 2011, 5:51am
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Head reedet! Sam Cooke - Having a Party ( mp3 )
Before - Sam Cooke: Sam Cooke on Amazon During - Otis Redding: Otis Redding on Amazon After - Small Faces: Small Faces on Amazon

We’d appreciate some recommendations from all of you music lovers so vote for Lyfstyl in the music category :) * CLICK HERE TO RECOMMEND US!!! Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come
"When (Sam Cooke) first heard 'Blowin' In The Wind' on the new Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album J.W. (Alexander) had just given him, he was so carried away with the message, and the fact that a white boy had written it, that he was almost ashamed not to have written something like that himself. It wasn't the way Dylan sang, he told Bobby Womack . It was what he had to say. 'I'm going to write something,' Sam told J.W. But he didn't know what it was." -- [...]

Christmas got funky, Christmas got soul! The analytical eagle-eyed reader may have deduced, by astute observation of the post's title, that this year's Christmas mix is dominated by soul music, and that there will be at least one more compilation. Indeed, there will be at least a second mix of Christmas soul tracks from the heyday of the genre – the 1960s and '70s. I have held back a few cracking numbers anyway. Still, this is a really great bunch of songs. Whoever I got the utterly gorgeous opening track from, I am particularly grateful to. The Flirtations, one of [...]

The local favorites share their 5 favorite wake-up songs. Follow Owl and Bear on Facebook and Twitter for contests, MP3s, and links that don't make it onto the blog.

Esteemed New Orleans drummer Albert ‘June’ Gardner, who passed away on November 19th at age 79, and had a career in music spanning over 60 years. For an overview, read his obituary by Geraldine Wyckoff from the Louisiana Weekly. ‘Gentleman June’, as he came to be called by those who knew him, was a low-keyed, versatile professional valued and respected by those in the know in the music business; but he remained unrecognized by the public at large until he began leading his own traditional [...]

Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News , New Music Three songs into his Tuesday-night set at the Bell House in Brooklyn, N.Y., Jonathan Richman made like he was going to play 'Pablo Picasso,' one of the classics he wrote as leader of '70s proto-punks the Modern Lovers. Then, he stopped, claiming he doesn't do "retrospectives." "If I don't feel 'em, I don't do 'em," he told the audience, still playing the riff on the nylon-string acoustic [...]

Welcome to the 4th On The iPod feature. This feature was created about seven months ago, and I was hoping to make it a more regular feature, but, totally understandably, it takes people a while to prepare their list of what could be their Top 10 Songs of All Time. To refresh your memories, let me recap what this feature entails. We are asking people, be they artists, listeners, or fans, what they would do if they were stranded on an island with an iPod that held only 10 songs. Which songs [...]

The Standards - #12 I called off Romancin', and then just as it does when you try to shun it, Romancin' came and smacked me in the face. And it's been awesome. Therefore - The Standards are back. Politics. I had a conversation several weeks ago and it won't stop nagging me: a close person in my crazy family tree and I were talking about our political stances, she informed me that I was letting "my humanitarian beliefs infringe on my political actions," and that I really needed to [...]
I'm not kidding when I say that this was a challenge. The list was down to 35, and I was thinking how great it was going. The last ten made me cringe a little bit after removing each one. Then some went back on and others went off. It turns out that when asked about [...]

It´s gonna be a Wild Weekend , take 36. Eclectic mixes a specialty. From gospel to afro, from Togo to Mexico. Plus: a brand new Dylan live track from the days of old. Take it away, guys. We´ll start off with the legendary Sam Cooke leading the Soul Stirrers, if only because the gospel according to Sam is always a joy to behold. Yes Sir! Next up: a charming cover of the Pete Townshend-penned I´m Free . Comes from an obscure ep from 1980 by Britgirls the Petticoats, their sole [...]
Five covers by the legendary soul singer.

Nick Tolford and Company are like Columbus's version of The Commitments . A bunch of young, (mostly) white people bringing rockified soul music to the people. Except Tolford & Co. write their own tunes that rival stuff sung by mostly dead Motown guys. This Saturday at Carabar the band will release their much anticipated debut, Extraordinary Love. Tolford was kind enough to give me a little window into his world - a world of Ray Charles, The Misfits, Booker T, MF Gnar and "Bed Intruder." [...]

Une rengaine estivale qu'il est bon de se rappeler! cake -love you madly- space invadas -done it again- generationals -when they fight, they fight- the monkees -goin' down- et puisqu'on est dimanche: sam cooke -lost and lookin'-