Saturday Night is

Ya wanna know what a Saturday night at the Apollo was really like back in the heyday? Well, bend an ear to this Collectors Choice Music exclusive! It was nights like these that made the Apollo one of the most famous clubs in the world: six of the biggest soul acts in the biz leavin it all on stage up in Harlem, with King Coleman the urbane host (he changed into a new outfit before every act). Check out this line-up: The Falcons - 'You re So Fine'; 'Alabama Bound'; Otis Redding - 'Pain in My Heart'; 'These Arms of Mine' (listen to one of the young females in the audience answer Right here to Otis plaintive Where can my baby be? in the first song!); Doris Troy (herself a one-time Apollo usherette) - 'Misty'; 'Say Yeah'; Rufus Thomas - 'Rockin Chair'; 'Walkin the Dog'; The Coasters - 'T ain t Nothin to Me'; 'Speedo s Back in Town', and 'Groovin '; 'Don t Play That Song', and 'Stand by Me' from headliner Ben E. King. But this is all just preparation for the grand finale, a round-robin version from all of the acts of Ray Charles What d I Say, as another unforgettable Saturday night at the Apollo comes to a glorious end. And we got it all on tape.

The 1980s were an epoch of upheaval and rapid change in South Africa. The decade began with the country’s apartheid government fighting to maintain its institutionalized racial segregation in the face of global protests and demands for the release of human rights activist Nelson Mandela, who had been jailed since the early 1960s. By 1990, Mandela was free, and apartheid was on the way to being dismantled. On the music front, things were changing too; At the beginning of the decade, the main music style of black South Africans was the jazzy indigenous jive of mbaqanga, a provincial style that had held its place as the sound of South Africa since Mandela was first imprisoned. By the end of the decade, South African music stars were making international waves with bubblegum, a flashy variety of Afro-techno-pop.