Playlist here

I woke up early this morning to finish the latest George Pelecanos novel called "What It Was". It's vintage GP as he heads back to 1972, and to the hero of four of his novels, the black private investigator Derek Strange. 

Nobody writes with music and invokes the spirit of an era like Pelecanos. "What It Was" is a blacksploitation crime movie; a funk-soul blood relative of an earlier classic novel of his called "King Suckerman".  Hell it even has a cameo from Nick Stefanos, geek fans. 

Pelecanos junkies are reading this mumbling about this blog post preaching to the choir. So let's reel in the rest of you. George Pelecanos is currently one of the producers on HBO show "Treme", as well as one of the writers and a producer of God's own television show, also known as The Best Series Ever Made; "The Wire". If you enjoyed those TV shows, it's a fair chance there is something for you in one of his nineteen novels. Start with the the "Washington Quartet" books. 

Anyway - the music. Music is a huge part of everything Pelecanos writes, and with this novel being set in the "Watergate" time of 1972, and in the Washington ghetto, the soundtrack is as spattered with funk, and soul as it is with blood and broads.While I was reading it, I decided to make a note of all the tracks mentioned, then put them into a Spotify playlist. 

Here you go

It features awesome music from Sly, Curtis, Donny Hathaway, Funkadelic, James Brown, Isaac Hayes, Stylistics and more. My musical OCD has to point out a couple of things, (this being the internet, it's no doubt someone else will at some point anyway). Two tracks are missing: Kool & The Gang "Soul Vibrations", and Ollie & The Nightingales "Just a Little Overcome" (Tommy Tate on the vocals). I thought about putting in another Kool track, but that would be cheating. And putting in the St Etienne version of "Just a Little Overcome" would be like swapping Rioja for Ribena. So forget that, yo. 

 I'm going off on one again. Pelecanos always does. Enjoy the playlist.  The book is out now.