Listen: I Can’t Stand It / The Spencer Davis Group
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Imagine my thrill in ’75, stumbling on one of those big tubs full of 10 for $1.00 singles in JM Fields, the massive department store, somewhat a forerunner to Wal-Mart. They were few and far between then, and my memory has zero recollection of it ever happening again.

This was the outskirts of Syracuse and the result of a completely unplanned stop to buy God knows what. No wonder I turned to drugs soon after, it was the only way to replicate the high. I systematically dug through this pile a few times, insuring not one was overlooked. I shudder to imagine what I may have left behind, but regardless, the gem of the day was The Spencer Davis Group ‘I Can’t Stand It’. Rare even then, extinct now.

‘I Can’t Stand It’ was the band’s second UK single, but first in the US, and only release on Fontana. Tame by comparison to later A sides, still Steve Winwood’s undeniable Ray Charles styled vocal surely must have been the envy of every other white singer in England, all desperate to sound black.