More than 30 years after writing his pioneering full-length study of the rise of rock'n'roll, Charlie Gillett finally gets around to compiling a series of informal audio companions to The Sound of the City. There is nothing "definitive" about these five two-CD sets, each devoted to music associated with one of the prime crucibles of 20th-century popular music, but you would have to look long and hard to find more satisfying entertainment.
Each set contains around 40 tracks and is like a wonderful radio programme, minus the commentary. The stylistic boundaries are marked by the classic jazz of Louis Armstrong's West End Blues and the white-boy hip-hop of Bran Van 3000's Drinking in LA, but the heartland is the 1950s, with lavish helpings of the 1940s and 1960s on either side. Jump music, gospel, R&B, doo-wop, bebop, uptown soul, and the US response to the British invasion are all heavily featured.
Long-time listeners to Gillett's radio programmes will recognise some old favourites, such as Otis Leaville's Love Uprising, but the selection branches out in all directions and it is hard to imagine any listener not being introduced to a whole bunch of new best friends. If you're going to buy just one, make it Chicago, for JB Lenoir's lilting I Sing Um the Way I Feel, or Memphis, for Mable John's Your Real Good Thing (Is About To End), the alpha and omega of deep soul.
