Welcome to The Soul Show on WYEP. Here’s the lineup for today:
- 8/20 is a milestone day. Isaac Hayes would have turned 80 last week. We celebrated his birthday then, and now we move to 50th anniversary of Wattstax, one of the most important festivals in black music history. Hayes and most of his Stax label cohorts were there. There’s music from that day every hour of TSS on 8/27
- Creed Taylor passed away this week. So many achievements: the championing of Brazilian music in North America, the signing of John Coltrane to Impulse!, the mission and marketing of his CTI label. We’ll play some Creed Taylor International recordings, plus a musical homage from Marcus Miller.
- Valerie Simpson, with her late husband Nick Ashford, represented songwriting royalty with everyone/thing from Ray Charles to Motown to Chaka. Her birthday this week is celebrated on TSS.
- On Three Rivers at Three, I’ll talk about the INEZ finale of Just Summer, the emerging Chamber Music Pittsburgh series. It seems like everybody was there.