Playing Favorites 7/9/2022

I have been putting together a playlist I titled Favorites Live.   Most of the songs are favorites performed by the performers that made them famous.  Heartache Tonight by the Eagles.  On My Own by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald.   Moondance by Van Morrison.   There is something fresh and vital about live performances and YouTube provides a perfect medium for finding them.   But once you begin to search YouTube for songs you love, you discover something else … songs you love by singers that didn’t originally record them.  Have you ever followed Daryl’s house?   Hosted by Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates fame, Hall brings mostly lesser-known artists to his ranch in Pawling, NY to perform their own songs and well-known songs by other original artists.   What results is some interesting versions of songs you know by performers you possibly don’t.  A good example is Aretha Franklin’s beautiful Daydreamin’ by Daryl Hall and his band featuring Diane Birch on keyboards and lead vocals.   It is worth a listen, here.

But another source of great covers of hit songs by other artists are life performance recorded at various smaller venues around the country.  Recently, I found a performance of Aretha Franklin’s hit, Until You Come Back to Me done by Chaka Kahn.  If you are not a devotee of R&B music, you should know that according to Wikipedia, Chaka’s career has spanned more than five decades, beginning in the 1970s as the lead vocalist of the funk band Rufus. Known as the “Queen of Funk”, Khan was the first R&B artist to have a crossover hit featuring a rapper, with “I Feel for You” in 1984.  She has won ten Grammy Awards and has sold an estimated 70 million records worldwide.   What makes her performance of Until You Come Back to Me a favorite of mine is that it is accompanied by a solo electric guitar played with a strumming style by Ricky Rouse.  The combination is just beautiful, and, yes, a favorite.

Enjoy!!

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