1. The SpinnersSpinners

This list would probably be different tomorrow, but this first Spinners album, or as you might call them, The Detroit Spinners, is great. I just love soul music, and I love Philly soul. And this was just an amazing album. It had three soul pop hits, ‘Could It Be I’m Falling in Love’, ‘One Of A Kind’, and ‘I’ll Be Around’, and there are some great ballads on it, and I really started getting into it. There’s a lot of soul on my list, but I started getting into it around 68, 69.

I was totally captured by Philly and Motown, and this is an album that brings me back to that time. But it’s also a timeless record. Philippé Wynne was the lead singer. He’d do all the ad libs, and he was just an amazing, amazing singer. I saw them play a few times live. The group had no political statement exactly, those songs could have been ten years earlier or later. But it was released at a time, 73, when everything was crazy – Vietnam, people were marching in the street, but this was a record, a place, where you could go and just chill out. This album always put a smile on my face and made me feel good. You could dance to a few of the songs, but they weren’t disco hits. It was right at the birth of disco, which were interesting times in terms of American culture. By the time disco came, people wanted an escape.