While the recordings on Eddie Piller’s latest release maybe familiar to diehard fans of great ’60s music, the story behind it will be new to many but is well worth telling – and hearing – all the same.

A lot of youngsters fell in love with the Mod lifestyle during the revival at the end of the ’70s, but the more inquisitive ones – like Eddie – wanted to know more about the original fashions, the original influential figures, and most of all the original music. Step forward one Randy Cozens, eager to give the benefit of his advice. In those pre-internet days his platform of choice was the letter pages of the weekly music press. His enthusiasm, his passion, and the sheer volume of missives he posted persuaded Sounds to commission Randy’s guide to the music that was played in the all-nighter clubs in London’s West End in those early ’60s halcyon days. And so, the original Mod Top 100 was born.

Eddie has taken Randy’s list, and added some personal favourites from the era where original selections are no longer available. The result is ‘Eddie Piller Presents The Mod Top 100’, a new 4CD set containing 100 examples of R&B, Soul, Jazz, and Beat that you would expect to hear on the finest and most discerning dancefloors. With new sleeve notes from Eddie, and the generous support of Randy’s children, Paul and Terry, this release also serves as a fitting tribute to one of the most influential and important figures on the scene (as Eddie relates, when Randy passed away in 2003 there were more than 500 mods at his funeral, dancing in unison to The Soul Brothers Six and ‘I’ll Be Loving You’).

‘Eddie Piller Presents The Mod Top 100’ includes Soul divas like Doris Troy, Betty Everett, and Bessie Banks, the tender side of Soul from Chuck Jackson, Mitty Collier, and Eddie Holman, floorfillers from James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, and Solomon Burke, instrumental grooves from Hank Jacobs, George Stone, and the Ramsey Lewis Trio, and much more. The Soul torch passes down the generations but the flame just keeps on burning.

‘Eddie Piller Presents British Mod Sounds of The 1960s’, and ‘Eddie Piller Presents British Mod Sounds of The 1960s Volume 2: The Freakbeat & Psych Years’ are still available on CD and vinyl.

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