Recommended The Uptown Sound’s Billy Bungeroth’s 10 favorite secret soul songs

Sometimes, it's hard to know where to start in a genre or medium. What’s the best comic book to read first? Which symphonies are essential? With Recommended, The A.V. Club asks some of our favorite pop-culture experts what some of their favorite things are in an attempt to make everyone’s lives just a little bit more well-rounded. In this inaugural edition of Recommended, JC Brooks And The Uptown Sound guitarist Billy Bungeroth digs deep into his record collection and runs down 10 of his all-time favorite soul records—and no, we’re not talking about Al Green’s Greatest Hits.

Barbara Lynn, “This Is The Thanks I Get”
Billy Bungeroth: This record came out in the mid ’60s on Atlantic. She’s cool because she’s also a great soul singer and a guitar player. Any time you watch a clip of her on YouTube—she still plays to this day—she always strums without a pick. Being untrained myself, I like that she figured it out herself. I love watching her sing and play. She was really influenced by Sister Rosetta Tharp, this awesome gospel singer who would play a Les Paul guitar in the middle of mass in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Pictures you see of her are so awesome—just, like, her, in the middle of a church playing a guitar with devil horns on the side.

The Mighty Clouds of Joy, “I’m Glad About It”
BB: This is a hard-to-find 45 on Peacock Records. The Mighty Clouds were a gospel group, and both sides of this record are really groovin’, but what makes this track so special is that the lyrics are actually pretty macabre. This guy runs through all the worst things that have happened to his friends and says he’s still glad to be alive. It’s way past what you’d expect from an early-’60s soul song. He talks about diseases and cars going off the side of the road. It sounds like something Nick Cave would write.

Bessie Banks, “Go Now”
BB: This record was later covered by The Moody Blues, but this version is on Tiger Records. It’s a super heartbreaking song with beautiful lyrics. The Moody Blues had a minor hit with it, but Banks did nothing with her version, even though it’s about as great as any single gets. It’s so beautiful.

Gene Chandler, “Good Times”
BB: Gene Chandler was famous for singing “Duke Of Earl,” but he had a really great career based out of Chicago. It’s kind of lost, though. People don’t mention him much, and they don’t play his hits on oldies radio. I think that’s because they play more pop hits than black R&B hits. Occasionally you’ll hear this song on 102.7 in the morning, though, and it’s the best summer song ever. “Good Times” came out in 1965, and why it wasn’t a huge pop hit, I have no idea. Chandler sings it so well and it’s arranged beautifully. It’s got the Chicago sound with the great horns and everything. It’s not too hard to find, either.

Bobby Rush, “Mary Jane”
BB: This is off a double-sided single with this song called “Chicken Heads.” They’re both just full of filthy lyrics about drugs and sex. It came out on Galaxy Records in 1971, and it’s so funky. The music is just as dirty as the lyrics are. It’s a shame his stuff was never really reissued. He had such a long career, and he never even came close to breaking over into white audiences, but man are those early singles awesome.

Booker T And The MGs, “Sunday Sermon”
BB: This one’s kind of a hard song to find, but it’s really my favorite Sunday chill-out song. It’s not an organ song, like you’d think you’d get from Booker T. It’s him playing piano, and it’s just beautiful. In the middle of his career, he went to Indiana University to study music, which is just really, really neat. He’s a great musician on top of being a super-hip, awesome, groundbreaking organ player. He’s just a wonderful musician in his own right.

The Impressions, “Seven Years”
BB: This is a Curtis Mayfield original that got lost in the shuffle on Young Mods’ Forgotten Story. It’s got these heartbreaking lyrics about this relationship, and how he’s just not able to get over it. It’s so specific that you get the feeling that it was written from life and about something in particular. It’s not one of those “baby, baby come back to me” songs. Mayfield had this way of writing where you could tell that these are real people, and these were real things that were happening. That’s what he brought to the genre. It’s far more real than other stuff.

Sugar Pie DeSanto, “Do The Whoopie”
BB: If you’re a soul DJ and you’re not playing this, you’re really missing out on maybe one of the best Chicago dance songs of all time. DeSanto is a blues singer, so she doesn’t get categorized in soul records in stores, usually. The nice thing about when soul got really big in the late ’60s, though, is that blues singers started making soul records. Blues enthusiasts hate it, but if you pick up, say, “Betty And Dupree” by Muddy Waters, that’s a straight up soul song. It’s really good, too. It’s him fronting a Stax-style soul band.

Renaldo Domino, “Nevermore”
BB: The lyrics are so far past the whole genre. It’s a beautiful song, but if you listen to the lyrics, they’re really, really heavy. I mean, he quotes Edgar Allan Poe in a soul song.

Sam Cooke, “Mean Old World”
BB: I love music and I love records, but some people use their musical knowledge to put other people down, just because it’s hard to know everything. You can, now, though—with cross-referencing things, as in, “I like Otis Redding, and he liked Sam Cooke, and Sam Cooke liked Nat King Cole.” If anyone wants to start with Sam Cooke, they should start with Night Beat, because it’s a concept record, and the whole thing, except for one song, is down tempo. It’s got beautiful arrangements and lyrics, and you can just listen to the whole thing all the way through.

JC Brooks And The Uptown Sound plays tonight, March 18, at the Double Door.