The James Hunter Six: Whatever It Takes (Daptone/Southbound)

Aside from having a terrific and authentic soul voice along the line from Sam Cooke through Jackie Wilson to Smokey Robinson – and having sprung a series of solid albums, two of which have ended up in our Best of Elsewhere annual look back at the year – a few years ago James Hunter also rearranged the Beatles' pop hit It Won't Be Long into a piece of pure Stax soul.

It was clever but also sounded authentic and reminded you just how much of that early Beatlemania-era pop by them was grounded in the call and response of Motown, Stax and other soul.

Hunter had sung back-up for uber-fan Van Morrison, recorded with the late Allen Toussaint, added touches of reggae and blues to his palette which blended in seamlessly, and was the first British artist signed to New York's influential Daptone Records for his earlier Hold On.

That might be persuasive enough without hearing a note of this short – 10 songs, 28 minutes – album.

But now he adds a slippery rhumba shuffle (the opener I Don't Wanna Be Without You), touches of gospel, has that fist-tight band back with punchy horns and organ, pulls his excellent guitar work front'n'centre in a few places (check the groove-riding blues of the instrumental Blisters) and again writes crisp, contemporary soul songs which sound like newly minted classics from the Sixties.

However he is no retro lounge act but uses the familiar tropes to write songs about need, loss (the regret-filled I Should've Spoke Up which sounds like a lost soul-pop Cooke track) and the power of love to uplift and damage.

James Hunter (and his band) is someone you can tune in to at any point in his decade-plus career but this – recorded in Daptone's California studio by the master Gabe Roth – is as good a place as any start.