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1. Perez Prado, “Mambo #8.” Say what you will about Lou Bega’s cheesy 1999 hit, “Mambo #5.” It was catchy enough to make me want to know more about the sampled song at its core. Which led me to Perez Prado’s infinitely better tune of the same name . . . and while Bega was a one trick pony, Prado was not. I don’t pretend to have tapped his oeuvre very deeply, but what I’ve found makes me very happy indeed.
2. Ray Charles, “What Would I Do Without You?” A weeper and a wailer from Brother Ray. I don’t think this was ever a major hit (not on the pop side of things anyway) — and that’s a cryin’ shame.
3. Elvis Presley, “A Big Hunk O’ Love.” I know. There’s Elvis . . . on my iPod? Surprise. And that’s not really a wishbone in his pocket: he’s just glad to see you.
4. Tom Waits, “Shiny Things.” There’s a lot of Waits on my iPod, too. He’s come up three times now since I started the MMM game. And it’s always been one of the more obscure and less remarkable tracks from Orphans. And so you get an unremarkable bit of commentary here. Ah well.
5. Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London.” For years, I thought the exclamation point line towards the end of this track was “And his hair was purple!” Why I ever thought it made sense for Zevon to be singing about some sort of punked-out lycanthrope, I dunno.
6. Dinah Washington, “All Because of You.” Straight-up sweetness from the Queen of the Blues.
7. Aretha Franklin, “Call Me.” Speaking of soulful sweetness from musical Queens . . .
8. Gladys Knight & the Pips, “If I Were Your Woman.” Sometimes, the shuffle feature deals you a lovely three-part history lesson. Or at least a sequence of artists, each of whom arguably owes an awful lot to the one who shuffled up immediately before. I don’t plan these things. They just happen. Does the chain continue past Gladys? . . .
9. Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues.” . . . No, of course it doesn’t. We jump backwards in time and skip over a genre or two. But this is a nice forward-thinking tune on the first day since October or so where Minneapolis has seen the thermometer push past 60 degrees. Let’s keep that rhythm going now, okay?
10. Stevie Ray Vaughan, “Pride and Joy.” And we finish up with some fine, fine, superfine grind-it-out Texas blues. I gave up on fetishizing most of the guitar heroes of my youth a long time ago. But somehow Stevie Ray’s licks — like the love he has for his pride and joy — never seem to grow old.

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