Little Johnny Taylor – Somewhere Down The Line / What You Need Is A Ball

Somewhere Down The Line’ has been a huge mod / R&B essential spin for many years now, and it’s not hard to see why. With it’s bluesy harmonica and guitar riff married up to a full, swinging horn section, the production perfectly encapsulates the developing early 60s sound, where blues and R&B eventually gave way to soul. Little Johnny Taylor was the perfect exponent of this sound too, a singer who came of adult age himself in the early 60s, obviously inspired by the blues sounds of his early childhood, but contemporary to the singers who were inspiring the new genre shift at the time. The b-side ‘What You Need Is A Ball’ is perhaps closer still to a pure soul sound, but still with that earthy blues backbone and groove which proves so tough to stay still to.