American listeners: How’s your French? Oh. Well, let Google translate the Soulful Bits site if you want to read about upcoming jazz gigs in Paris. There’s not much more to read on this seriously musical site. Internet radio is the point here, not social shenanigans or registration roundabouts. Is that a gracious way of saying that the site is under-developed? We’ll take under to over in this case, in the service of a great playlist.
We were hooked by Earl Grant‘s dusky reading of Fever, which took us straight into a nighttime fog along the Seine, Parisian streetlights fighting against the damp air. Wait, it’s Monday morning. James Brown‘s I Feel Good would bring us back to reality, and we knew it thanks to the Soulful Bits running playlist, which puts the on-air track in the middle of the sequence. You can see a few tracks back and queued up. Nice feature! There’s no skipping, of course — this is pureplay Internet radio. But it makes the station magnetic.
Who else? Geno Washington, Nina Simone, Trevor Dandy, Dee Dee Warwick, Willie Hutch. The tracks cross decades as nonchalantly as a Parisian taxi driver runs a red light. This tasty stream lives up to the soulful billing. An on-site flash player is as easy to figure out as a butter croissant, or you can raise the bitrate by throwing playback into a desktop player.
We’re hooked. The site tells us there are 68 other listeners. The programming deserves a bigger audience.