Where To Hear Classic Soul On The Internet, Part I
Written Dec. 13, 2007 by Sean Ross in Internet Radio with 2 Comments
As hard as it's been to find pre-Beatles Oldies on the radio, it's also been hard to find Classic Soul--at least during the week. The handful of terrestrial R&B Oldies stations available on the Web in recent years have either disappeared or segued to Urban AC. So I was more than willing to click through when I got the e-mail invite from Soul-Patrol.com's Bob Davis for the Classic R&B channel that he was now programming at RadioIO.com.
In his e-mail, Davis promises to find the "sweet spot" for both "hardcore and casual" R&B Oldies fans with a "deep and wide" playlist that was 1,500 songs (as of a month ago). Referring to the New York radio dial of the late '60s, he describes it as a combination of R&B WWRL and WBLS, Oldies WCBS-FM, Top 40 WABC, and Jazz WRVR, but you could as easily think of it as the crossover hits from the Jammin' Oldies format, the Urban AC Oldies that are known only to those who grew up with R&B radio, the R&B titles from a "Real Oldies" station, and then a healthy dose of collectables on top of it.
Here's Radio IO's Classic R&B channel at 3:30 today:
Ad Libs, "The Boy From New York City"
Bob Marley & Wailers, "No Woman, No Cry"
Santana, "Oye Como Va"
Miracles, "Love Machine"
Bo Diddley, "Road Runner"
Dionne Warwick, "Alfie"
B.T. Express, "Give It What You Got"
Marvin Gaye, "Got To Give It Up"
Isley Brothers, "Fight The Power"
Angela Bofill, "This Time I'll Be Sweeter"
Isaac Hayes, "It's Heaven To Me"
Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, "Going To A Go-Go"
Billy Preston, "Nothing From Nothing"
McFadden & Whitehead, "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now"
Ruth Brown, "5-10-15 Hours"
Dusty Springfield, "Wishin' & Hopin'"
Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk, Pt. 2"
Luther Ingram, "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want To Be Right"
Reader Comments
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Bob's station sounds great, as his stations always do!
Sean, I thought you might also like to try the five channels of "Classic Soul" at AccuRadio.com -- the main channel plus four subchannels (1956-65, 1965-72, 1973+, and Women of Soul), drawing on a playlist of 1,900 titles.
As with all of AccuRadio, the channels are customizable, giving you the ability to pause songs, skip songs you don't like, and even tweak to some extent the list of artists you're going to hear.
Yours,
Kurt
SHAMELESS plug for a sponsor, Kirt. I can dig it.
There is plenty of room for both formats,but I like the element of "surprise" that I used to get form the radio,back in the day. AccuRadio sounds sort of like a "Jukebox". I can dig it.
Just a thought....
Earl