Sonny Curtis- Talk About My Baby/Red Headed Stranger

We lost Sonny Curtis last September, and his passing drifted by like a quiet chord change — subtle, almost unnoticed, but leaving the air different once it was gone. His songs traveled farther than most people realize, landing in the hands of artists as wildly different as the Everly Brothers, Bobby Vee and the Clash, Hüsker Dü and the Dead Kennedy's. And of course, before all that, he was a Cricket, standing right there in the glow of Buddy Holly’s early brilliance.

He never scored a blockbuster hit under his own name, but his recording career ran deep, wide, and wonderfully strange — proof enough in this 1960 45. Red Headed Stranger may have worn the A‑side crown, but it’s Talk About My Baby that hits me square in the sweet spot, the way only a perfectly cut, slightly forgotten gem can.