100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s #97 Roy C – Shotgun Wedding

Released: 1966

More seemingly than any other genre that was given birth to in the sixties, soul became a battleground. This was evidenced not just as it shifted from pop to having a more culturally conscious voice as the decade wore on, but in what happened next.

Across the pond a sect in northern England transformed outliers from this concoction of gospel and R&B into an amphetamine cult, whilst later the early hip-hop samplers used their parents vinyl to give it a second life. Roy Hammond was a wannabee boxer from Georgia, who as producer of The Honey Drippers wrote the anti-Nixon single Impeach The President in 1973; the opening drum break ended up being sampled on MC Shan’s The Bridge (And subsequently many other tracks) as rap took it’s first true steps out of the underground.

Then known as Roy C, in the decade before Hammond released over thirty singles, of which the cautionary tale Shotgun Wedding was his only hit. With both barrels pointed and shells ricocheting around the chapel, the youngsters were regretfully hitched to the sound of a classic back room boogie, a dirty sound for a dirty job. Guns or speed, samplers or civil rights; soul always seemed to be a battleground, this unholy matrimony being in more ways than one.