Let's get things off to a rousing start with
Bob Seger, Old Time Rock and Roll. But does it really soothe the soul, or rather stoke The Fire Down Below? This one goes out to Al 'Grope' Franken. I hereby proffer some friendly avuncular advice to my distaff readers, all three of them: never underestimate the ferocity of that fire. Good men battle it all their lives; bad men give into it.
Moody Blues, Your Wildest Dreams. The best ode to Boomer nostalgia.
Beatles, In My Life
Billie Holliday, The Way You Looked Tonight. An uncommonly long intro. I first heard this old tune in the The Lettermen version in 1961.
Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, et al., My Back Pages. Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert.
Dionne Warwick, Always Something There to Remind Me
Kinks, Come Dancing
UPDATE (12/3) A reader likes the Holliday selection:
Thank you for posting Billie last night. Nothing that Teddy Wilson did was ever bad, in my view, and often approached greatness. The tp solo at 0:40 is by Irving Randolph, one of the best artists of the 1930s, up there with Bunny Berigan (who his style resembles, and both are based on Armstrong). This is one of four titles recorded in sessions for Brunswick in NY, Oct 1936. Unfortunately his playing never recovered after an illness in 1939, and his work is rare. Here he is with Billie in Who Loves You, from the same sessions. There is also some stellar work by Wilson starting 1:48. Krupa is on drums, in unusually restrained mode.
As for Bunny Berigan, here he is in "I Can't Get Started" from 1937. More from the reader:
And thanks for posting the Berigan! Another creative soul destroyed by the bottle. When asked how he was able to play so well while drunk, he supposedly replied, “I practice drunk.” On one recording, can’t remember which, he actually had to be held up in order to play. But the playing was sublime.
In New York, on the day of the recording, August 7, 1937, Berigan was late, leading several band members to find him drunk in a bar on 147th Avenue. Taking him to Victor Studios, Berigan was so intoxicated his band members had to hold him up so he could sing and play trumpet. By the end of the song, as Berigan hit high E and finished, the band remained quiet; Astonished by Bergian's technical skill in spite of his drunken stupor, several members of his orchestra paid for cuts of the record to keep for themselves.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can%27t_Get_Started#Bunny_Berigan