Joe Strummer’s all-time favourite soul songs
With his leg-shaking fury and unshakable sense of political activism, Joe Strummer was among the brightest sparks of the punk revolution, but his personal listening habits expanded far beyond a penchant for buzzsaw guitars and bondage trousers.
Joe Strummer was among the brightest sparks of the punk age. With a leg-shaking fury and penchant for political activism, The Clash songwriter encapsulated everything that the revolution of punk should have been, but his listening habits expanded far beyond buzzsaw guitars and bondage trousers.
A core reason for the sheer endurance of The Clash in comparison to many of their punk peers who imploded after a handful of singles or a single album, was their endless desire for genre diversity. While virtually every other group who came and went from the sticky floors of Covent Garden’s Roxy Club nailed themselves to the mast of ‘here’s three chords, now form a band’, Strummer and the gang were already exploring the realms of rockabilly, dub, and ska music on their 1977 debut.
As their discography developed, that sound only expanded. By the time that The Clash folded in 1986, after an admittedly terrible final album in Cut The Crap, the band had – at one point or another – explored everything from Jamaican rocksteady to experimental jazz, hip-hop, and old-school soul, reflecting both the intense musical skill of the band members themselves, and the extensive music taste of Joe Strummer.
Back in 1999, the former frontman was given the perfect opportunity to espouse the depths of that music taste, handed a regular radio show by the BBC World Service, fittingly entitled London Calling. With apparent free reign to play whatever he deemed fit, the tracklisting for those radio shows were packed with musical gems stretching from New York punk to traditional African rhythms, and everything in between.
Over the course of the radio show’s run, Strummer took multiple opportunities, in between playing a handful of his own tracks, to share his adoration for American soul, funk, and R&B music. The Clash had their own flirts with the world in soul, particularly on Combat Rock, inspired by the surrounding sounds of their extensive time spent in New York, listening to the soul breaks being used by those early architects of the hip-hop revolution.
Even before The Clash caused riots in Times Square, though, Strummer harboured a particular appreciation for the soul stars emanating from across the Atlantic. Soul always held a message of love and unity at its core, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Strummer kept the genre close to his heart, as it wasn’t that far away from his own outlook on life.
What’s more, soul music has always had an element of political activism entrenched within it, typified by the likes of Marvin Gaye or Nina Simone who used their infectious rhythms as a means of civil rights activism back in the 1960s. You could argue, therefore, that soul wasn’t a million miles away from the political slant of punk.
Both Simone and Gaye made it into Strummer’s London Calling playlists, alongside Gaye’s fellow Motown alum, R. Dean Taylor, and the indisputable king of soul, Mr. Otis Redding and his legendary anthem ‘Try A Little Tenderness’. In between those titans of the genre, the songwriter threw in a few funk-slanted records, with The Meters and Eddie Bo leaping out as particular highlights within the playlists.
Strummer managed to cram a lot of music into those shows in an attempt to capture the length and breadth of his legendary tastes, but his affinity for soul and, in particular, soul activism shone through the entire show’s run on the World Service. He might have emerged surrounded by ripped clothes and battered guitars, but Strummer always sang from his soul, and that fact was certainly reflected in his listening habits.
Joe Strummer’s favourite soul songs:
- The Young Rascals – ‘Groovin’’
- Otis Redding – ‘Try A Little Tenderness’
- Nina Simone – ‘Ain’t Got No, I Got Life’
- The Meters – ‘Tippi Toes’
- Nina Simone – ‘Tell It Like It Is’
- Eddie Bo – ‘Check Your Bucket’
- R. Dean Taylor – ‘Gotta See Jane’
- Marvin Gaye – ‘Can I Get A Witness’
