A Trane song. A breakup shouted over a fuzzed-out bassline. A clavinet used like a typewriter slammed on a desk. Eleven Sundays into the HotSupper project, we've covered gospel from 1847, the Blues from 1947 and neo-soul from 1995 and never once repeated the mood or the story. Here's the whole run, in the order it landed in your inbox.
1. "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)" -- T-Bone Walker (1947)
The first Drop went back to a B-side that rewired the electric guitar. T-Bone Walker, the Texas kid who learned at Blind Lemon Jefferson's side, bent one string past the fret in 1947 and taught the instrument to moan like a voice. Every blues and rock solo since is a footnote to that bend.
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2. "You Haven't Done Nothing" -- Stevie Wonder (1974)
Stevie Wonder ran his clavinet through a fuzz box and turned a put-down of Richard Nixon into a number-one slap. The song's whole argument is one line -- 'we are amazed but not amused' -- and it still fits every administration since.
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3. "I Found My Smile Again" -- D'Angelo (1995)
Buried on the back half of Brown Sugar, this one is about someone handing you back a piece of yourself you'd quietly written off. D'Angelo barely raises his voice; he leans on the falsetto until the room leans in with him.
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4. "Can We Pretend" -- Bill Withers (1974)
Bill Withers asks for what cannot be -- a tomorrow with none of today's baggage -- and makes the asking sound like the only sane request. Jose Feliciano's guitar and Dorothy Ashby's harp hold the door open while the whole thing floats, unhurried.
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5. "I'm Coming Out" -- Diana Ross (1980)
The hook came out of a bathroom stall at a party full of men dressed as Diana Ross. Nile Rodgers turned that absurdity into a horn blast of an anthem, and the real Diana Ross left Motown's shadow with it blaring behind her.
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6. "Motherless Child" -- The Blind Boys of Alabama (2001)
A spiritual born in slavery, carried by Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson, and Richie Havens straight through the Civil Rights Movement. The Blind Boys of Alabama -- formed at a school for the blind in 1939 -- strip it to almost nothing and let the song do the rest of the work.
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7. "My Favorite Things" -- John Coltrane (1961)
A Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune becomes fourteen minutes of modal jazz. Coltrane had barely touched the soprano sax before this session; picked it up, found the waltz's dark center, and the gentlest song in The Sound of Music started asking questions it wasn't written to ask.
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8. "Les Fleurs" -- Minnie Riperton (1970)
Minnie Riperton built a whole baroque-soul greenhouse out of one flower and let it sit forgotten for decades. It took Jordan Peele and Paul Thomas Anderson putting it in their films to send the world digging for the original, five-octave range and all.
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9. "People Get Ready" -- The Impressions (1965)
Curtis Mayfield wrote a gospel song about a train that has been running since the Underground Railroad. Sixty years of passengers have boarded -- Aretha, Bob Marley, Rod Stewart -- and the train has never once asked for a ticket.
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10. "Funkin' for Jamaica (N.Y.)" -- Tom Browne (1980)
Four weeks at number one on the R&B chart and it never crossed to pop -- that tells you exactly who this song was for. The bassist was fifteen, and producers have been borrowing his line ever since, without a note of credit.
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11. "Anti Love Song" -- Betty Davis (1973)
Betty Davis told love to get lost, louder than funk had ever let anyone say it. A Bay Area supergroup backed her debut, the record took fifty years to find its audience, and it's still recruiting -- the woman is still not apologizing.
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Eleven Sundays down. No algorithm decided any of these, no trending page. Just a song and its story, once a week.
