Sam Cooke: Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha
[purchase]
James Taylor: Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha
[purchase]
Things heat up a bit as we move from one title theme to another this week, leaving behind songs that use the same word twice to start a set of songs which mention dance styles or dance moves in their title. Yes, folks, it's a Star Maker Machine Dance Marathon, and if it works, I'm hoping it'll become an annual pre-spring event, marking the warming of the world with a bit of energy as we shake off winter with some dance floor moves.
Sam Cooke provides a solid transitional tune with his hot, humid, heavily rhythmic tribute to the Cha Cha Cha, a dance of Cuban origin often referred to doubly in American parlance; Sam's original is a worthy addition to the canon, and it'll certainly teach you how to do the moves, but it's James Taylor's 1991 version, off his sorely underrated Adult Contemporary album New Moon Shine, that brought me here: slow, sultry, languid, and aching with a kind of longing that Sam surely never envisioned, bless his heart.