Born in West Africa and raised in the darker corners of French vinyl culture, DoctorSoul didn’t fall into the groove — he dug it, note by note, pulling up roots from jazz fusion, Brazilian rhythms, acid jazz, and the deep grain of disco that no algorithm ever really touches. He didn’t ask for the title. He earned it — one rework, one bassline, one vinyl-pitched salvation at a time.
Back in the late ’80s, before Paris knew what to make of acid jazz, he was already threading it into Bordeaux’s bloodline. Before the word “re-edit” was whispered on every blog and Bandcamp page, he was operating in radio shadows and late-night sessions, turning forgotten soul into reverberating now. He’s not a revivalist. He’s a resurrectionist. He’s not here to copy the past — he’s here to extend its breath.
DoctorSoul isn’t some casual bedroom DJ who downloaded Serato and learned to loop. He’s a bassist — a groove mechanic. He builds his reworks the way a luthier builds an instrument: slow, deliberate, letting the tone tell him what it needs. His “Re-Therapy” edits — from Michael Franks to lost AM radio gold — aren’t just musical retouches. They’re emotional restorations. Songs that once flickered get rewired to burn longer.
He’s released through legendary Midnight Riot, Berlin’s Too Slow To Disco, Discoholics Anonymous and a dozen labels that know what they’re doing. But labels don’t define him. The groove does. His tracks top the disco charts not because they’re trendy, but because they’re true. Listen to “I Like The Way You Move” or his sunset-fused take on “Saturday Morning” and try not to feel like the asphalt just got softer under your shoes.
DoctorSoul plays like a man who remembers what joy costs — and how vital it is to keep paying the price. He’s part DJ, part sound healer, part archivist of moods long buried by cheap nostalgia. And when he lays it down — slow, warm, tight — he’s not trying to impress you. He’s trying to restore you.
In an era where the past is remixed to death and the future sounds like static, DoctorSoul is that rare kind of artist: someone who makes time feel sacred again.
Here he’s working his doctor’s wonder on Bill Wither’s “Lovely Day” from 1977.
By the time Bill Withers wrote “Lovely Day”, the world had already heard him sing of heartbreak, loneliness, and the hard labor of loving and losing. He was the blue-collar soul man from Slab Fork, West Virginia — a man whose plainspoken poetry made even silence feel like scripture. But in 1977, nearly a decade after Ain’t No Sunshine, Withers stepped into the daylight with something far rarer than sorrow: a song about peace that didn’t sound naive, a song about joy that came earned.
The story goes like this: Withers was in the studio with the legendary R&B producer Clarence McDonald, just vibing. They had a groove — McDonald playing a warm, buoyant progression on a Rhodes electric piano. Withers, never one for elaborate metaphor, started mumbling a line over it: “When I wake up in the morning, love…” The rest followed like a prayer spoken by someone who had seen storms and decided to build a house anyway.
But “Lovely Day” wasn’t just some sweet throwaway from a softer moment. It came at a time when Withers was already frustrated with the record business. Columbia Records had tried to fit him into its mold, and he didn’t like being molded. The industry wanted hits. He wanted honesty. Yet somehow, in this moment, the two met.
The song’s most famous passage — that soaring 18-second note on the word “day”, still one of the longest sustained notes in pop history — wasn’t just a vocal stunt. It was Withers becoming the feeling. He later said it wasn’t a technical thing. He just felt like holding the note that long. As if to say: Sometimes happiness doesn’t arrive in words. Sometimes it arrives in breath.
There’s no cynicism in “Lovely Day”, and that’s the miracle. Written at the tail end of a tumultuous decade, a time of political disillusionment and disco glitz, it offered something elemental: Look outside. Love somebody. Let the light in.It wasn’t escapism — it was a choice. Withers, who had worked in factories and served in the Navy before music ever found him, knew exactly how rare a lovely day could be. And he knew exactly how much it mattered to claim one anyway.
The song has endured — through commercials, soundtracks, Obama rallies, and hip-hop samples. But it never got old. It doesn’t sound dated. It sounds grounded. In a world built on acceleration and collapse, “Lovely Day” is a pause. A breath. A reason.
Bill Withers walked away from the music industry not long after. But he left us this, a kind of secular hymn. And on the mornings when everything threatens to go wrong, the song still waits patiently — a sunbeam on vinyl, whispering: Just one look at you… and I know it’s gonna be…
DoctorSoul’s note on his re-therapy:
I’ve been addicted to this track since decades, but sadly the original was impossible to Beatmatch in a DJ Set because its BPM was fluctuating between 95 to 100 BPM (and that is logical as it was recorded in the late 70s…)
So I decided to entirely map the track in order to stabilise the BPM at 100.
I also resurfaced some instrumental parts that were not kept in the original recording,I then replayed the Drums and Bass in true respect to the original session, added my Sorcerer-kinda-sound with spices and effects, and have asked the Godfather of Soul and his crew to bring some extra add-libs to support the production.
This is a feel-good track and I hope you will have fun.
Thanks for your great support and donation that will help me bring more new productions.
BPM is 100
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