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1. Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters, “Money Honey.” A glorious, old-school, doo-wop dissertation on the cruelties of capitalism and its detrimental effects on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  No, really, it is.
2. Ray Charles, “Hey Good Lookin’.” Brother Ray makes Hank Williams swing and jive.  And a party where the strongest refreshment is “soda pop” never sounded more fun than it does here.
3. Joe Diffie, “Good Brown Gravy.” I have no idea who Joe Diffie is.  None.  I originally found this track online when I was trying to round out a mix CD devoted to the intertwinement of food and love/lust.  I suspect I dropped “gravy” into a search engine (inspired by a track I already knew: Tampa Red’s extraordinarily smutty “What’s That Taste Like Gravy?”) and this was one of the winners that turned up.  Maybe the only winner on that search.  But a beaut.  “You can sop it with a biscuit, you can eat it from a pan, you can lick it off your fingers when it’s runnin’ down your hand.”  Who knew that the Waffle House menu could be so sexy?
4. Dominoes, “Sixty Minute Man.” A classic bit of ’50s R&B raunch.  Less well known is the Dominoes’ followup record, “Can’t Do Sixty No More”: the sad saga of what happens to Lovin’ Dan when he’s finally “blown his fuse” for good.
5. Cat Stevens, “If You Want to Sing Out.” Sweet and simple, and one of the many lovely things to come out of that quirky little gem of a cult movie, Harold and Maude.  (And whatever happened to Bud Cort anyway?)
6. Jackson Five, “ABC.” Decades later, it would become the core hook sampled for Naughty by Nature’s “OPP.”  But this remains one of those tunes that always pulls me back to childhood memories of Saturday mornings in front of the TV — where I always sided with the Jackson brothers over the Osmond brothers, both in terms of music and in the land of animated cartoons.  The prepubescent Michael’s exhortations to his “girl” to get up and “show me what you can do” didn’t mean anything to me then — and they’re actually a little creepy in retrospect — but it’s still a damned fine pop-funk groove.
7. Tom Waits, “Nirvana.” A largely spoken-word track from Waits’ Orphans three-disc set.  Here, there are no drunken peg-legged dwarves playing canasta.  No baying hounds nipping at the heels of the circus clown.  No tattooed barmaids pouring bourbon into cracked tin cups.  And yet it’s still very much Tom Waits.
8. Jon Rauhouse, “5 After 5.” I think I said something about Rauhouse before.  And I don’t think I’ve got anything much to add to that . . . unless it’s to note my keen excitement about the upcoming release of Neko’s newest.
9. MFSB & the Three Degrees, “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia).” I spent five years living in Philly as an undergrad (and immediately thereafter).  It never sounded like this.  That’s not a knock on Philly, mind you.  I loved the city when I was there.  But the streets were not filled with righteous riffs, glorious grooves, and soulful strings.
10. Asylum Street Spankers, “Pakalolo Baby.” Ah, the Spankers!  If you ever get the chance to see them live, do.  Just do.  You’ll thank me later.  And you may be getting a very rare treat at this point, since I gather the costs of touring have led them to scale way, way, way back on their previously robust itineraries.  Now you may have to travel to Texas to see them spank it up.

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