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August 28, 2010:
CAPTAIN JACK WATSON: A Brand New Man (CDS) Four stars **** Distinguished Southern Soul Debut by a New Male Vocalist. Captain Jack Watson benefits mightily from the sure and experienced hand of his mentor, Carl Marshall (who also discovered him), on his debut CD, A Brand New Man. Watson has a voice that sneaks up on you. It's husky and phlegmy--not Bobby "Blue" Bland phlegmy--but something that comes from deep within a ravaged respiratory system.
So that when Captain Jack on rare occasions raises his voice and gives you an indication of its underlying power, as he does in sections of "Brand New Man," you sit up and take notice like a cat whose territory has just been invaded by a Doberman. This is a "grown man"--no doubt about that--not some peachy-chinned "young' un."
Watson's seasoned vocal quality recalls some of the best and most-accomplished "wailers," whether they be country-western or R&B, and with Watson's authenticity abetted by Carl Marshall's songs, musicianship, arranging, producing and background vocals, A Brand New Man has virtually none of the flaws one usually finds in debut albums.
I've been playing "Brand New Man"--the opening and title cut--more than any other single song over the last month and still haven't tired of it. At bottom you can dance to it: it makes you move. The rhythm track is stunning, as are all aspects of the studio work, and when the echo effect comes in with the very first words, "For the last five years" and "I was lonely for love," you're already so fired up you wished the Captain bellowed the words with stadium-sized reverb.
Watson and producer Marshall work against the song's seductive hook and full-bodied melody (which could have been done in a much straighter, rock-and-roll way) with heavy-handed keyboard riffs and a funky, choppy, against-the-beat arrangement that make the song distinctly different and a surefire club hit.
Whether the arrangement translates into greater record sales--and the catchy underlying tune comes through in radio airplay--will be interesting to watch. You might find yourself wishing for a little better version (the long, vibrato-less keyboard fills by Marshall are sometimes annoyingly simplistic), but you're never in any doubt that you're listening to a great song and a terrific new singer.
See Daddy B. Nice's #1 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single: August 2010.
The slow and stately ballad "I'm In Love With A Woman Other Women Talk About" forms a nice bookend with "Brand New Man" and proves Captain Jack can sing a slow jam as well as a rocker. The cut was actually released as the first single a few months ago.
See Daddy B. Nice's #2 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single: March 2010.
Captain Jack's theme, as in "Brand New Man," is the redemptive quality of love, even for the down-and-out--those unfortunate people who look on themselves as one of "life's failures."
"I've been beat down in life so much,
I thought I'd never fall in love,"
--Captain Jack sings, and you have no doubt he's telling it straight.
The high point of "I'm In Love With A Woman Other Women Talk About" is the musical phrase that ushers in the chorus, an ascending ladder of four, slowly drawn-out notes that tug on your heart with surprising force.
Nothing else on the album comes quite up to the level of these two genuinely hit-worthy singles, but all is done with workmanlike precision and technique.
Marshall should revisit "There's Nothing I Can Do" in the future. There's a major song lurking in the wings, but "There's Nothing I Can Do" doesn't quite capture it. It offers a hint in the opening stanzas but then seems to lose its way during the choruses.
And yet, even at its worst, "There's Nothing I Can Do" is another tune that it's almost impossible not to dance to, part and parcel with the appealing dance-floor magnetism of "Brand New Man."
"Every Time We Have A Misunderstanding You Run And Tell Somebody"--"Your Precious Love" recycled in a stripped-down chassis--would have been better left alone. The bass line, chords and hook all recall the Motown classic, but Marshall's redo will only make you wish you were listening to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell with all the Motor City trappings.
The bulk of the supporting cast of tunes, however, forms a seamless fabric with "Brand New Man" and "I'm In Love With A Woman Other Women Talk About."
"I'm Glad We Made Up" is already receiving airplay across Stations of the Deep South. A duet with Jamonte Black, it's a down-home rocker that has a distinctive Southern Soul ambience.
"Every Time I Think It's Over Love Brings Me Back" sounds like a warm-up tune for the Flames, although James Brown would never have permitted his band a warm-up in prime time. This is eighties funk, which for Marshall is more bedrock than the blues.
Speaking of the blues, "The Only Thing I've Ever Done Right" features a great vocal by Captain Jack--he's got that vintage blues mojo adrenalin going big--and a great blues guitar stint by Marshall. At times, as in this song, Captain Jack Watson recalls Dickie Williams, another seasoned and little-known performer.
If you're wondering, "Why the long titles?," I concur--it's hard to remember a song's title if it's too long. I say this to introduce perhaps the next-finest music on the CD: "The Power of A Man Is The Strength Of A Woman." Watson actually sings it as:
"The strength of a woman
Is the power of a man,"
--so perhaps the long titles confuse Marshall himself. At any rate, "The Strength Of A Woman" is a solid tune. By this time in the CD, you've become accustomed to the simple, sustained keyboard licks by Marshall. Or maybe it's just that the technique works to perfection in "The Strength Of A Woman."
Meanwhile, Watson launches another effortless outing, his voice so unified with the song that it seems at times almost anonymous, invisible. The medium is the message. The ultimate compliment for a singer.
A Brand New Man is a strong performance by a new artist who possesses immediate Southern Soul "creds." It's Daddy B. Nice-guaranteed to make you dance around your living room.
--Daddy B. Nice
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August 15, 2010:
FLOYD TAYLOR: All Of Me (CDS) Four Stars **** Distinguished effort. Should please old fans and gain new. The CD's have come deliberately, over well-spaced intervals--Legacy (2002), No Doubt (2005), and You Still Got It (2007)--but oh, what an impact they've had. Each one has been a near-masterpiece, spawning a minimum of two or three--and sometimes more--bona fide Southern Soul hits.
The voice is famously (and accurately) known as the reincarnation of Johnnie Taylor, and the material has featured the best songwriters the genre has to offer (Lawrence Harper, Harrison Calloway, George Jackson, etc.), and most notably the recently deceased Charles Richard Cason, whose compositions were perfectly realized in the peerless vocal work of the young artist: "Baby I've Changed," "I Love Being In Love With You," "Old School Style," "Slipped, Tripped, Stumbled And Fell," "You've Still Got It," "My Bad," "Step Into My Heart" and "Sweet Love," to name but a few.
There are more flamboyant young Southern Soul stars, but none of whom one can say they always excelled, they never failed. So the appearance of a new CD by Floyd Taylor on a new label, CDS (the first three were published by Malaco), featuring material written by a new slate of younger-generation songwriters, represents a dramatic departure.
And while the audience may have asssumed that much of Floyd's early success was the result of his access to his famous father's supporting cast and their cumulative knowledge and advisement, the new CD, All Of Me, confirms the conviction of many close watchers of Southern Soul music over the last decade that it's Floyd's talent, painstaking craftsmanship and patience in picking material that has made his music so consistently memorable.
As most soul and blues fans are already aware, All Of Me is anchored by "All Of You, All Of Me," the most vintage-sounding FT song on the CD and the single that has been lighting up Southern Soul radio all summer. The ballad, written by S. E. Powell and Izk Jenkins, is an Earl Powell project. (You may remember Earl Powell from the worthy single, "If You Catch Me Sleeping (Walk On By)" from the You Still Got It album.)
Four of the ten songs on the album are written by the fresh-sounding composing duo of Izk Jenkins and Sidney Jones, the latter also being responsible for the music and production of those tunes. Jones and Jenkins are the creative geniuses behind the amazing "That's My Lady (Me & My Lady)," a super-atmospheric slow jam that should be the next single. Floyd sinks his teeth into the lyrics and doesn't let go. His phrasing and enunciation are a miracle to witness, and the background vocals lend just the right touch of airy sophistication.
"Wanna Make Love" is nearly as good, with a soft, insistent hook that approximates the romantic pulse of foreplay and its accompanying obsessions, and "Baby I Love You" is a little more generic but just as typically well-done.
The big surprise of All Of Me is Floyd's teaming up with southern soul-slash-hiphop firebrand Simeo Overall for both the material and production of no less than five of the ten cuts on the CD. The even bigger surprise is that the tactic works.
The new songs aren't better than the old-school FT songs--that would be nearly impossible given their classic ambience--but neither are they embarrassing by comparison. There is no noticeable drop-off in quality. They sound like first-rate Floyd Taylor songs, which is a pretty amazing feat when you think of all the potential pitfalls (seen daily in the shortcomings of other respected artists) and the high standards imposed on Taylor to match his early work.
Simeo's "Everyone Celebrate," which opens the album, and "Someone To Love You," which closes it, are vivid illustrations. Floyd smooths out Simeo's "edge," and even the Simeo-haters among Southern Soul insiders would have to admit that Simeo knows how to plumb his inner depths for musical inspiration to put into his songs.
Other than Floyd's voice, these new songs do not sound like classic Taylor vehicles, and yet they are undeniably soulful. Even the uptempo "I'm 'Bout It 'Bout It" succeeds not only because it's at its heart a catchy hook but because Floyd engages it with so much enthusiasm
So a kind of magic does happen. Floyd Taylor wraps his voice around the Overall compositions, making them thoroughly his own, even when Simeo sings prominent back-up, which by the way burnishes the songs with yet another soulful dimension. From Simeo's perspective, this album may represent his best work to date.
But it's Floyd vocal magic that transforms the material on the CD, well-written and well-chosen as it is. On "Someone To Love You" Floyd takes what would in Simeo's delivery be a heartfelt but weepy outing and makes it resonate with pure, optimistic love: the sunshine, as it were, to Simeo's shade. With Simeo singing such strong backup, the song blossoms into a beautiful, Simon & Garfunkel-like exercise in harmony, all done with a scintillating precision that doesn't sacrifice any of the real emotion.
All Of Me showcases the one artist in Southern Soul who above all should appeal to the neo-soul crowd--the kind of people who like Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings or Syleena Johnson.
Floyd Taylor's Southern Soul brings a lot more to the table musically, as fans of the genre already know and neo-soul fans have yet to find out, but the commercial crossover potential is intriguing to ponder, nonetheless. It's the sign of an artist coming into his own--an artist becoming big enough to render musical labels meaningless.
--Daddy B. Nice
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August 8, 2010:
DAVID BRINSTON: Beat It Up (Ecko) Three Stars *** Solid. The artist's fans will enjoy. The movie director Billy Wilder once said, "You are as good as the best thing you ever did," and by that measure David Brinston is good indeed. Brinston's "Party ('Till The Lights Go Out)," which I always thought would have been better titled "Nothing But A Party," is the best thing he ever did, and because of it David Brinston holds a very special place in the heart of every true Southern Soul fan.
"Party" doesn't bowl you over; it seduces you. It doesn't hit you over the head, nor does it disappear in a wisp of smoke. It occupies a well-trodden path in the middle of the musical road in terms of structure, tempo, delivery and message. And yet there is some elusive, magical element that lifts the song above all the other middle-of-the-road songs that appear daily, including Brinston's own.
So the unevenness in Brinston's albums since then--some might even say the disappointment in his career--has been his failure to repeat that ineffable magic of "Party." Plying that mid-tempo, emotionally-even, golden-mean musical territory of "Party" has proven to be a much harder task than the easy-going classic ever hinted at.
Brinston lathers up a good sweat and a landmark vocal--as engaged and intense as he's sounded on anything in recent memory--on his latest stab at a hole-in-the-wall anthem, this one by his best vintage songwriter, Linda Stokes, who wrote "Party Till The Lights Go Out." There's a touch of Bruce Springsteen in the snappy, marching-orders rhythm of the title cut of his new CD, Beat It Up (Ecko Records), and some listeners will think of Michael Jackson's "Beat It."
It took me awhile to warm to "Beat It Up." The melody and hook are so mainstream-sounding, I wasn't sure if it qualified for the more rarefied tastes of the Southern Soul audience. But after a week or two of listening, the song has not grown irritating or trite, as mainstream pop is prone to do.
The song's durability is beholding primarily to David's vocal. By the time the song rolls through the verse--
"You've been playing these games
Out here for a long, long time.
. . .Partying at the Holiday Inn
Room 249."
--Brinston's fans will be wholeheartedly enjoying the singer's unusual passion. (See "Beat It Up," Daddy B. Nice's #3 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single, August 2010).
Brinston excels at being the cool, reserved guy, the bad boy-slash-ladies' man, yet on "Beat It Up" he throws off the accoutrements of "cool" and steps up to the plate, metaphorically speaking, and swings away. The result is one of Brinston's best uptempo tunes in ages--better than last year's "Dirty Woman" (with J. Blackfoot) by a long stretch.
The rest of Beat It Up is stocked with just enough good material to justify buying the CD rather than only the MP3 of "Beat It Up."
In "Let's Get Together" Brinston's cheater--
"Woke up this morning
Feeling horny.
Had you on my mind. . . "
--and the mid-tempo outing (written by G. Robinson and Morris Williams) presents a straight-ahead proposal to seal the sinful deal.
"Booty Humpin' Grind" (written by Raymond Moore) is even more appealing, boasting one of the better melodies on the disc. This is the kind of song the performer--with some twenty years of recording under his belt--can negotiate in his sleep.
"Back On The Back Streets" is a bluesy number with a winning arrangement that will remind longtime fans of "Somebody's Cuttin' My Cake," Brinston's penultimate blues. A somber-sounding keyboard inhabiting the range of a symphony cello section gives the song an even harder edge.
"Take Me Back" is a laid-back ballad with a simple and repetitive but tasteful piano riff, while "Bounce That Booty" gives David the opportunity to wrap his honey-soaked, battle-scarred falsetto around the kind of salacious lyrics he could recite by heart while driving, texting and eating a double-cheeseburger with fries.
"High Dollar Woman" occupies a spot on Brinston's shelf next to all his other "woman" songs: "I Just Love Women," "Hard Working Woman," "Too Many Women" and the like.
"She's a high-dollar woman.
I'm a low-money man."
There's nothing here that will surprise the listener. Brinston is nothing if not consistent. And his reliance on the same songwriters (Stokes, Rayborn, Moore, Ward, Robinson, Williams, Chambers) album after album insures the sameness. You either like the security of knowing you're getting "more of the same" or you fault the artist for doing the same album over and over again.
That's why two of the songs on the CD, written by composers outside the usual Ecko axis, sound fresh and indicate a potentially new creative direction. One is "Bus Stop," written by Bobby Conerly (See Daddy B. Nice's #10 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single, August 2010), and the other is "Honest I Do," a delightfully original ballad written by Charles Burton with last-minute embellishments by Brinston and Ward.
Beat It Up closes with a languid ballad called "I'm A Reformed Cheater," in which David takes on the atypical role of the cuckold.
You wouldn't pull out this album or any of the David Brinston albums of the last five years if you were trying to impress someone new to Southern Soul with the high points of the music. But for fans conversant with Southern Soul's contemporary catalog and Brinston's own recording history, Beat It Up is another worthy addition to the Brinston catalog.
I still think Brinston needs to shake up his career in a big way in order to impact a larger audience. The best way--the no-brainer way--to accomplish this (as I've suggested in the past) is to reprise versions of those ground-breaking early hits: "Party ('Till The Lights Go Out)," "Kick It" and "Hit And Run," as fellow performer Carl Marshall has recently done by reprinting his early classics, "I've Lived It All" and "Good Lovin' Will Make You Cry."
Not only is Brinston not taking advantage of the short memories of his loyal fans. He's ignoring the larger audience for Southern Soul music that has appeared in the last few years, an audience that has never had the pleasure of hearing his finest work.
--Daddy B. Nice
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July 17, 2010:
LEE "SHOT" WILLIAMS: I'm The Man For The Job (CDS) Three Stars *** Solid. The artist's fans will enjoy. Lee "Shot" Williams serves up a mixed bag on this, his 11th album in a long and distinguished (if largely unheralded) career as one of Southern Soul's foremost vocal interpreters.
Dependent upon other songwriters for his material, Lee "Shot" here selects songs from a varied list of composers including young Southern Soul artists Simeo, Eric Perkins and Charlie Brown, old-school crooner Lionel Ritchie and grizzled bluesman James Peterson.
The new album stakes a middle ground somewhere between the pitch-perfect Southern Soul of Lee "Shot's" last CD, Shot From The Soul, one of his very best, and the uneven efforts of some of his mid-aughts albums such as Nibble Man and Meat Man. The venerable Harrison Calloway shares producing duties with Eric Perkins (see Daddy B. Nice's Featured Artist: July 2010).
The album starts auspiciously with the title cut, "I'm The Man For The Job," an uptempo tune that careens ahead via a stinging guitar doing a telegraph-like, staccato riff that perfectly complements Lee "Shot's" wonderfully-seasoned vocal. His one-of-a-kind tenor sails above the rhythmic pulse with a verve as charismatic as anything he's ever recorded.
"Put your legs in my face," "Shot" yells plaintively in the chorus. "Put some hips right on my lips."
"753-L.O.V.E." slows it down a bit. The Eric Perkins tune plies a mid-tempo rhythm with an easy-going melody that is content to stay simple.
Both "I'm The Man For The Job" and "753-L.O.V.E." have the potential to be popular Southern Soul singles. "I'm The Man For The Job" was Daddy B. Nice's #2 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single for June 2010.
"Thirty Minutes," written by the usually avant-garde Simeo Overall in an uncharacteristically derivative exercise in the blues, begins the uneven portion of the CD. The chorus has a fifties-novelty feel and the vocal by Lee "Shot" is just workmanlike.
Similarly, "Yesterday I Fell In Love" has the sound of a retread, performed much better in former Lee "Shot" songs, "I'll Take The Risk" and "Make Me Holler."
Things take a turn for the better in "Welcome To The Club," although Williams' vocal seems to be huffing and puffing just to get back to a higher level. The song has a fairly worthy melody and an intriguing theme, a lonely-hearts club.
"Come on in," Lee "Shot" wails. "Welcome to the club. . . We've got every sad record / That you can think of." Producer Harrison Calloway gives the song a boost with one of his trademark, spirit-lifting horn sections.
"It Ain't Me No More" isn't memorable, but it's followed by a bluesy rendition of a Charlie Brown tune that made Daddy B. Nice's Top Ten Singles in May 2010, "Got A Good Woman," in which "Shot" ventures into B. B. King territory and triumphs with an authentic delivery. He sounds like he's singing through a broken bottle in a dark and twisted, sticky-countered, butts-on-the-floor dive.
"Got A Good Woman" showcases Lee "Shot" doing what he does best: infusing songs that in other singer's hands are merely imitative, transforming them through the unique passion of his voice and delivery into superlative music.
"Are You Leaving Me For Another Man" is a good but not great outing. It's just good enough to recall "Country Woman" or "Wrong Bed" from the "Shot From The Soul" album, but it never quite reaches the exquisite heights of those songs. And since those songs are the lofty standard by which we now judge Lee "Shot," "Are You Leaving Me For Another Man" sounds a little weak and anemic.
"It's Easy" is the undisputed clunker of the CD, in this reviewer's opinion. It sounds so "white," so bland. Even Lionel Ritchie's rendition sounded like a half-baked rendition of the Keith Carradine tune of the same name from the movie "Nashville."
This business of redoing "classics" is dicey. Sometimes it works to perfection, as--say--when Bobby "Blue" Bland sings "What A Wonderful World." He transforms the classic and makes it his own.
On "It's Easy" Lee "Shot" is less successful. Everything sounds okay, but the song doesn't fly, it doesn't soar. It seems grounded in the here-and-now of strictly-journeyman cover songs.
The gospel turn "Lifting Up The Name of Jesus"--a classic in another sense--is much better. Here Lee "Shot" sounds comfortably in his element, with a gospel background chorus that nicely complements his energetic vocal.
The album's closing tune, "Yesterday I Fell" reprises the number-four track on the CD and fails for the same reason: it never really escapes its deeply-rooted derivative sound. Not only does it sound like the Williams hits noted above, it ultimately traces its lineage to "Shot's" crowd-pleasing "freak" songs ("She Made A Freak Out Of Me," "She Blew The Whistle On Me.")
Obviously, Lee "Shot" considers "Yesterday I Fell" a "keeper" or he wouldn't have done it twice. That, however, is a miscalculation. The "keepers" on this album are "I'm The Man For The Job," "753-L.O.V.E." and "Got A Good Woman." "Welcome To The Club" also deserves special mention.
The high point is without a doubt the "legs-in-my-face" "I'm The Man For The Job," with its cute and salacious female chorus perfectly showcasing Lee "Shot's" singular ability to convey the male hormones on steroids and good-natured fun.
--Daddy B. Nice
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July 5, 2010:
EARL GAINES: Good To Me (Ecko) Five Stars ***** Can't Miss. Pure Southern Soul Heaven. If you like Roy C., you'll love Earl Gaines. Gaines is little known outside of the Southeast, although he hails all the way back to the dawn of R&B. He flourished in an overlooked Nashville-based soul scene with Excello Records and other Ted Jarrett labels of the fifties and sixties, then left the recording business for steady employment in the "real world" for the better part of two decades.
When he re-emerged as a soul singer in 1989 (thanks to Nashville producer Fred James), his vocal talents were undiminished. In the twenty years since Gaines has honed his seasoned, no-nonsense, full-barrelled vocal stylings to an exquisite, old-school level of mastery.
For a "country" musician Gaines was always uncommonly but unpretentiously witty and sensitive, characteristics evident in the colorful titles of his songs: "I Kissed My Last Ass" (from The Different Feelngs of Blues & Soul CD") or "Blue And Miserably Unhappy" (with Roscoe Shelton from the Let's Work Together album) or "Death in Buzzard Gulch," the incredibly-titled album on the 1978 Gag label.
But the care and sophistication Earl Gaines put into his song selection were also lavished on his considerable vocal talents, which to the present-day ear sound almost too good to be true, harking back to the man-sized delivery of artists like Bobby "Blue" Bland and Little Milton or country-western artists like Eddie Arnold. Compared to Gaines, today's Southern Soul artists sound like--well--kids.
Gaines' gained visibility (particularly among devotees of Southern Soul) in 2008 when Ecko Records' John Ward signed him to record the well-received "Nothin' But The Blues" album. Good To Me was conceived as its follow-up, and although Gaines died before it was completed, the album is the crowning achievement of his career, bringing together an almost perfect collection of contemporary and historical tracks.
The opening cut, "I'd Like To Try It One More Time," showcases the historical sound, surpassing the Ted Jarrett-written original recorded by Larry Birdsong by leagues while--due to a vintage bass-and-baritone chorus--harking back to the simpler, straight-ahead R&B of yesteryear.
Written by Jackson, Mississipi's Rick Lawson, "I Don't Wanna Be Here," by contrast, represents the powerful contemporary side of Earl Gaines. The ballad pushes at its tempo with the force of a horse bucking at its bridle, brimming over with feverish, frustrated emotion. The young singer-songwriter Lawson recorded the tune on his "I Wanna Have Some Fun" CD, but the Gaines' version sounds like a brand new offering and is probably the first time most of the audience has heard it.
"I Don't Wanna Be Here" personifies the thematic thread running through Good To Me: the emotional and spiritual battlefield between men and women. Younger artists may flounder for subject matter. Earl Gaines knows what Bland and Johnnie Taylor and all the greats of soul music knew: the space between a man and woman is infinite and inexhaustible.
The album continues with the Ted Jarrett-written "It Ain't Easy To Tell The One You Love Good-Bye," which as the old-timey title suggests is an Excello-sounding, mid-tempo ballad steeped in fifties-and-sixties-style keyboard and strings. It's the first time the song has ever been recorded, and once one gets used to the old-school style the song shimmers with feeling.
Then comes the first "monster" cut of the CD, "I Just Don't Know Anymore" (written by Raymond Moore and John Ward). A steamy keyboard fronts a rhythm section as seductive as a bullsnake on the move. The song has unusual heft--a deep, deep groove in the vein of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind"--and through it all Earl Gaine's effortless and personality-filled tenor glides like one of the creatures from the movie "Avatar."
"Good To Me" comes from another writing stalwart at Ecko, Gerard Rayburn, who specializes in simple, catchy hooks, and the "Mississipi Boy"-sounding "Good Old Country Boy" reworks a Raymond Moore track first done on the "Nothin' But The Blues" CD. Here, in his only questionable decision of the set, Gaines slows down the "Country Boy" melody and talks the lyrics over an awkward, jazz-filtered-through-funk arrangement. The straight-ahead 2008 original is still the best.
The album swiftly returns to brilliance with "I'm Throwing In The Towel," (See Daddy B. Nice's #2 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single, July 2010), a new Raymond Moore song that Gaines renders with the aplomb of a genius. Human goodness drips from every syllable he sings. The song is so full of regret it sounds like a story your mother or father might have told you as a small child.
Three songs from the "Nothin' But The Blues" album close out the album. Although this may be interpreted as a drawback of the Good To Me CD (fans who bought "Nothin' But The Blues" will be buying the same tracks, not to mention "Country Boy," twice), the three repeated cuts represent the most solid music from the former CD and add much to the overall success of Good To Me.
Gaines knows how to seek out and choose material in the tradition of the masters. In this CD he goes to the "source" in three distinct places: 1/ Nashville-based Ted Jarrett, 2/ the Memphis-based Ecko stable of writers, especially Raymond Moore, and 3/ Jackson State alumnus Rick Lawson.
"Let The Past Be The Past" is by Lawson, recorded on his "Sexified" album of 2005.
"If I Could Do It All Over" (originally recorded by Donnie Ray) is by John Cummings and John Ward, and "Let's Call A Truce" is by Raymond Moore.
Longtime Southern Soul songwriter Moore in particular bestows some of his finest work upon this CD. In Gaines Moore has found his perfect interpreter.
Nevertheless, curious about the decision to insert the songs from "Nothin' But The Blues," I asked producer John Ward about the timing of Earl's passing relative to the studio work. Ward confirmed that Gaines had died before they were able to finish.
John Ward had called Earl Gaines on a Wednesday to set up a session for the following Monday to go over some new songs they had ready. Gaines was "totally positive" and saying things like,"I'm ready anytime, man. You just tell me when to be there." John was concerned--he thought Earl's voice sounded weak--but he went ahead and set up the session.
"As soon as I hung up," Ward said, "I went into Larry's" (Ecko promoter Larry Chambers)"office and asked him if he knew whether Earl had been feeling bad or not and Larry said 'no,' and that he had just talked to Earl a couple of days before and he sounded fine. It seemed kind of strange to me though and I was not feeling so sure that Earl was really up to it like he said he was. It was just a couple of days later when Larry told me he had gotten a call and that Earl had been admitted to the hospital. Earl never came back out of the hospital. He was in there about 2 weeks before he died on December 31st" (2009).
In a way, Good To Me is just reward for fans--just reward for all the great music we've missed out on due to the untimely deaths of Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Little Milton and others. Cruel irony, though, that in the very act of producing the best album of his life and replenishing our thirst for rhythm and blues, Earl Gaines too should fall.
--Daddy B. Nice
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June 20, 2010:
CARL MARSHALL: Love Who You Wanna Love (CDS) Five Stars ***** Can't Miss. Pure Southern Soul Heaven. With the starry-eyed ambition of a man much younger, veteran Carl Marshall keeps searching for that perfect record, the one that will take him to another level. Coming after a spate of hiphop and urban-influenced albums by the younger generation reviewed here in the last few weeks, the sounds on Marshall's CD are especially welcome: warm, heartfelt and grown-up.
To those who've followed his career for any appreciable time, it can seem as if Marshall is only shuffling the same songs from album to album. But Carl Marshall's albums have remained obscure, so why not try and get it right?
If so, he's finally found that elusive, magical, near-perfect mix in Love Who You Wanna Love. New but faithful, exquisitely-produced versions of "Good Lovin' Will Make You Cry," "Let's Dance," "Don't Let Love Turn Into Hate" and "Sex Costs" anchor and space a surprisingly eclectic group of songs.
Even those who have become weary of the sermons, homilies and motivational monologues that have marred some recent Marshall efforts (including last tracks on T. J. Hooker and Nellie "Tiger" Travis albums) can take heart. For the most part, Carl doesn't indulge on Love Who You Wanna Love. He's intent on serving up straight-ahead music, and the results are superb.
Everything Marshall has done before is done better here. "Good Lovin' Testimony" (featuring Rue Davis)" and "Let's Dance, Let's Shag" (featuring David Brinston) will quickly become the versions of those songs his fans will want to keep. Rue Davis sounds a bit uncomfortable at first, but once he warms up his gravelly growl greatly enhances Marshall's own, and Michelle Miller is a more than capable female back-up.
In its original form, Carl Marshall's "steppin'" song, "Let's Dance." had an impromptu, tentative, quasi-live sound, although it was a studio recording. Marshall is meticulous in recreating the passion and immediacy of the original while elevating the arranging and producing. The guest vocals are now front and center, far exceeding the original in quality, as is the instrumentation from the rhythm track to the high-flying synthesizer and sax fills.
Even the funk-oriented numbers on Love Who You Wanna Love--the title cut, for example, or the mesmerizing "You Got A Love"--go down easier for fans tired of that form.
Marshall takes a lot of care to make each funk-based track interesting. "Love Who You Wanna Love" is not very appealing until halfway through the song, when Marshall begins to pile on the flourishes and the song begins to pick up some vaunted funk momentum.
Marshall outdoes himself with the vocal on "You
Got A Love," underlining one of the accomplishments of this CD: scorching vocals by a singer not always known for his loyalty to the sung word. The song is a little bit of Carl Marshall meets 70's Herbie Hancock--another seemingly tired form that comes off refashioned and refreshed.
A rapper named Gesta adds immeasurable texture to the funk jam "I Was Trying To Get My Groove On." None of this variety, however, destroys the dominant Marshall mood and ambience, which transitions seamlessly from track to track, even jams to ballads.
Indeed, an electrified blues named "Alberta" is not out of place, thanks to a revealingly-straight and satisfying vocal by Marshall with a synthesizer-distorted, background vocal (plus female cameo) over an unusually distinctive, minimalist arrangement.
The ballad "You Never Know Who You're Going To Love" mines the same ground as "Good Lovin'" without being derivative, blending Marshall's vocal, Miller's back-up and a crisp arrangement highlighted by a delicate guitar. Michelle Miller also carries the lullaby-like "Don't Turn Love Into Hate: Part 2."
"Linda" is a pop song with a Carl Marshall theme, unwed motherhood. Marshall keeps the "pop" to a minimum by talking rather than singing the lyrics, giving the song a flatter, funkier tone than it would otherwise have. And on the explicitly-funky track "Full Time Lover," with Marshall fronting his impeccable orchestra of musicians and singers, the impossible happens: an old dancehall warhorse of the eighties who maxed-out on funk long ago actually gets a glimmer of funk as something new and novel again.
But the jewel of this collection is the re-introduction of the long-out-of-print, early autobiographical masterpiece, "I've Lived It All," wisely placed in the closing position. (The better to remember it.)
The song sounds as if it was recorded yesterday--but oh--with what a difference. Immediacy. Lyricism. Personal detail. Vulnerability. Suffering. Clear-headed self-appraisal. And, ultimately, spiritual transcendence. They're all present in "I Lived It All."
Carl Marshall songs always boast tremendous keyboard work, but--good as it is--it will never come close to the ethereal, bagpipe-sounding keyboard that announces "I Lived It All" and the underlying rhythm track--half-military, half-gut-bucket--that carries the song along while Carl Marshall pours his guts out.
"I was out on my own
At the age of twelve.
From a kid to a man,
I caught plenty hell."
Most contemporary Southern Soul fans are probably not even aware Carl Marshal writes songs like this. "I Lived It All" is the young Carl Marshall.
"Nobody can tell me,
Nothing about rough times.
I know where I came from.
I believe I've lived it all."
The difference is in the perspective the artist brings to the song. These days, as a grown man, Carl Marshall wants to come from a place of wisdom. Dispensing it, that is. But the more powerful song will always come from the "victim-of-life" kind of experience we get most usually from young artists like L. J. Echols and LaMorris Williams.
That's why Mel Waiter's admission of vulnerability (an older man not being able to keep up with a younger woman) is not only refreshingly unique but brings so much resonance to his present hit, "I Can't Do it."
If you can't find something personal (implicit or explicit) to put behind the song you're singing, then chances are that song is never going to mean much to anybody else. By those standards "I Lived It All" is the finest song Carl Marshall has ever recorded.
Did I mention the great, prolonged saxaphone solo that culminates "I Lived It All"? It must be heard to be believed.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Love Who You Wanna Love CD
Note: CDS Records has informed me that my previous notice and appreciation of this song is the very reason it is included on this album. DBN.
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June 12, 2010:
FALISA JANAYE': Sweet Love (Milaja) Three Stars *** Solid Southern Soul Debut by a New Female Vocalist. When an artist begins a song with a vocal flourish having nothing to do with the lyrics, as the tongue-twistingly-named new performer Falisa JaNaye' does with the opening track of her debut CD, Sweet Love, you expect it to immediately seduce you, the way Jackie Neal does with her mellow but super-soulful "Yayyy-yayyyy-yayyyy" at the beginning of "Money Can't Buy Me Love," or the way Carl Sims does with his hair-raising wail that commences "It Ain't A Jook Joint (Without The Blues)," or the way (more recently) James Morgan begins his "I'm All Good In The Neighborhood" with a mesmerizing long falsetto note, or (closer to home) the way one of Falisa JaNaye's own producers, young Mr. Sam (Sam Fallie), jump-starts his "Since You've Been Gone" with two long, soulful, alto-registered notes.
By contrast, the "Shooby-dooby-dooby-doob-doob-do-owwww" with which Falisa JaNaye introduces the opening track ("You Won't Miss Your Water") of her debut CD is so amateurish and unspectacular you immediately wonder why the producers didn't cut it out.
"You Won't Miss Your Water" quickly regains some solid musical footing, enough at any rate to have garnered some air play on Southern Soul stations over the last couple of months. The song reworks the old William Bell theme from a young female's perspective. And more than any other tune on the new CD, "You Won't Miss Your Water" adheres to tried-and-true southern r&b conventions.
"I'm tired of your games.
You're putting me down.
Taking me for granted,
Acting like you don't care."
By the time she has reached one of the later verses, JaNaye' has worked up a decent head of steam, negotiating the lyrics with fairly impressive power and intensity. Her vocal mode is of a type not often seen in Southern Soul music: brash but thin, whiplash-smart but lacking in maturity, akin to a lesser-endowed and much younger Shirley Brown.
"Sweet Love," the dominant ballad on the CD, with a seductive line ("Take off your clothes") that Falisa proffers with convincing emotion over a lush and well-done chorus, follows "You Won't Miss Your Water" and showcases JaNaye' in her most flattering light, something like an updated LaKeisha. The lyrics are perfect for the extremely young, which is JaNaye's natural demographic.
In fact, the repeated couplet of the song that begins with--
"Can I make sweet love to you?
Can I make it up to you?"
--followed by the chorus's rejoinder, a long, exquisitely drawn-out "Can I. . . " is the highlight of the album. And when Falisa sings an extended "explode," she elevates the entire song to a level not often seen outside of the cream of the crop of hiphop's slow-jam divas.
"Tonight Is The Night" is a musical reworking of the Betty Wright song of the same name, and in some ways it's better. Wright's original was overly-derivative and sentimental, traits which the JaNaye' version (with a different melody and words) avoids by infusing the song with an aggressive rhythm track and yet another well-crafted vocal by Ms. JaNaye.
"Can't Nobody" seems to be an atypical song for the feisty and sexy persona Falisa projects in the first three songs of the LP. There's a bluesy feel to the tune, with minor-sounding chords that stress a deeper kind of soul (think Reggie P.'s "Your Love Is A Bad Habit"). The result is one of the more interesting and durable cuts on the disc.
"Whind" is a funk hook with a hiphop delivery--a dance floor jam. JaNaye's vocal gets lost in the percussion-dominated mix--as if she were out of breath, concentrating on her dancing. If you listen closely to the ending, you'll hear a cajun-accordion sound taking over the hook. That tiny hint of inspiration would have made a far more original song.
"I Will" (featuring Mr. Sam) returns JaNaye' to a more Southern Soul mode, but the composition--all sound and fury over a meager melody--undercuts competent vocals by the talented pair.
"How Do You Do (featuring Crimson) bounces back hiphop's way, especially on the overly-repetitive choruses.
"Cowboy" has a fresh-sounding pop-style arrangement, showcasing a smooth-as-peach Janaye vocal. Much more could have been done with the "giddy-up" part of the vocal. The in-your-face, jazzy-sounding background singing works, but not as well as a rough, chitlin' circuit treatment would have.
"Sweet Love (Lover's Mix)" reworks the album's best cut, and "Come To Me" closes out the album.
Sweet Love, with the likes of Southern Soulsters Sam Fallie, Gerald Robinson, Morris Williams and Jazzi Anderson bolstering the writing, production and general artistic support, is far too accomplished a debut to warrant panning. (I rated five of the songs 3 stars, which is very good.)
On the other hand, this is not an especially "likeable" album for the typical, old-school Southern Soul fan. It has all the personality of an exercise video. Each song is well-crafted, but some final, convincing spark is lacking.
Reason? It may be the songwriting, or it may be that the young performer simply doesn't have the personality in terms of experience yet to ultimately bring all of this off musically.
The trouble with Falisa JaNaye's music, from a Southern Soul perspective, is--quite frankly--that it's not "grown folks" music. Grown folks don't go about making love the way people do on this album--unless they're not really grown up.
Falisa's music has the cool feel--the shellac-hard ego--of the hiphop young. The album lacks the warmth of the best of Southern Soul. If the music worked one hundred per cent, even grown folks would "get with it." (Witness the LaMorris Williams and "Impala" phenomenon.)
And to Felisa's credit, she comes close to breakthrough success of that sort with "Sweet Love," which unfolds like the finest of silk sheets, with care taken to no less than three layers of tantalizing vocals: the primary track sung by Falisa, Falisa's own background, and then the background singers' background. They roll in one after another, a roundelay of beautiful and ultimately hit-worthy sound. The extra care and inspiration taken in "Sweet Love"--and, as a result, the credibility and hit potential of that song--bode well for Falisa's future. And the album makes clear she doesn't fear success.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Sweet Love CD, MP3'S
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Captain Jack Watson, A Brand New Man 8/28/10
Floyd Taylor, All Of Me 8/15/10
David Brinston, Beat It Up 8/8/10
Lee "Shot" Williams, I'm The Man For The Job 7/17/10
Earl Gaines, Good To Me, 7/5/10
Carl Marshall, Love Who You Wanna Love, 6/20/10
Falisa JaNaye', Sweet Love 6/12/10
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Recently reviewed:
LaMorris Williams, Sexy Soul Songs 5/22/10 (Scroll down this column.)
B. B. Queen, I Can Play Da Blues (Hearon), 5/8/10 (Scroll down this column.)
Avail Hollywood, The Young Gunn Of Southern Soul (Nlightn), 4/29/10 (Scroll down this column.)
Luther Lackey, The Preacher's Wife 4/11/10 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Pat Cooley, Cougar 3/29/10
(Scroll down this column.)
Ms. Jody, Ms. Jody's Back In The Streets Again 3/14/10 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Nellie "Tiger" Travis, I'm In Love With A Man I Can't Stand 2/27/10 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Stephanie Pickett, Finally Made It, 2/14/10 (Scroll down this column.)
Donnie Ray, It's BYOB, 2/5/10 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Lee Roy, Should Have Called, 1/30/10 (Scroll down this column.)
Terry Wright, How Sweet Is Your Candy, 1/15/10 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
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Rating Guide:
Five Stars ***** Can't miss. Pure Southern Soul heaven.
Four Stars **** Distinguished effort. Should please old fans and gain new.
Three Stars *** Solid. The artist's fans will enjoy.
Two Stars ** Dubious. Not much here.
One Star * A disappointment. Avoid.
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May 23, 2010:
LAMORRIS WILLIAMS: Sexy Soul Songs: Vol. 1, The Ladies' Edition (Mabrey) Four Stars **** Distinguished Southern Soul Debut by a New Male Vocalist w/ One Previous LP.
Sexy Soul Songs is one of the most accomplished appearances by a new Southern Soul artist in recent memory. LaMorris Williams, according to the liner notes, has recorded a half-dozen LP's, but only one has been introduced to the national audience, via CD Baby: LaMorris Williams Sings The New School Blues (Melendo). Anchored by a sweet-tempered and even more sweetly-sung, mid-tempo tune, "Whatever Kind Of Love," the album has recently sold out its first printing and become unavailable.
Meanwhile, the centerpiece of the new disc, "Impala," has been burning up the air waves in select chitlin' circuit locations--particularly Jackson, Mississippi--for the better part of the last year.
"Ring On Your Finger," a rousing, quasi-acapella, intentionally-rough single reminiscent of Floyd Hamberlin's and Charles Wilson's "Mississippi Boy," preceded "Impala" and first charted on Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "Breaking" Southern Soul singles in September 2008.
"Ring On Your Finger" also won an end-of-the-year "Daddy" award for "Best Out-Of-Left-Field Song of 2008."
"Impala" made its first appearance on the Top 10 "Breaking" Southern Soul singles in July of 2009 under the title "We Can Do It," fresh off its first airing on WMPR, Jackson, Mississippi.
"Impala" charted again in September 2009 and at year's end was a nominee for numerous awards. It was the recipient of Daddy B. Nice's "Best Debut of 2009."
In short, this CD--first forecast for the autumn of 2009--has been long talked-about and anticipated. Still, I'd like to be a fly on the wall the first time Marvin Sease or Mel Waiters or Willie Clayton listens to this album. What will the old masters of Southern Soul think?
Will they dig it? Or will they be turned off by the Snoop-type synthesizer fill in the brief but melodic "Intro" that kicks off the album, or by the way Sir Charles (of all people) does a P. Diddy-like voice-over of LaMorris's name? Will they relate? Or will they be put off by the Timbaland style of the "Stroke It With The Motion" rhythm track, or by the Boyz 2 Men vocal stylings? In short, will they call this Southern Soul?
What the opening cuts of Sexy Soul Songs make clear is that this is not a Southern Soul album in the traditional sense, or even in the sense that the two aforementioned singles--"Ring On Your Finger" and "Impala"--may have led Southern Soul fans to expect.
While "Impala" incorporates many of the best elements of hiphop into its unique approach to Southern Soul, the song doesn't really indicate the extent to which the young LaMorris Williams has bought into the hiphop style.
Like the cover photo of LaMorris with thick black shades and a head tilted to display that diamond stud in his ear, Sexy Soul Songs will surprise the listener with its hiphop affectations, both personal and musical.
And when you ponder that it's the "King of Southern Soul," Sir Charles Jones, producing the cut--"Stroke It With A Motion" (his only contribution)--you're likely to think about what might have been accomplished in a traditional vein by a pairing of such exceptional rhythm-and-blues performers.
But soon enough comes "Impala" (Track 3), the centerpiece of the album.
A LaMorris voice-over narrative--totally convincing--sets the scene: two young musicians on the way back from a gig, stopping at a little roadhouse with a lot of cars in the parking lot. LaMorris and Big Yayo order drinks and LaMorris zeroes in on a girl in a "sexy little red dress" dancing by herself. He makes his move and, as sometimes happens, the lady stuns him with her reciprocity. She's ready to get it on.
"We can do it in any spot.
We can do it in the parking lot.
We can do it in the shower,
Baby, let's go for hours. . . .
You can make me holla,
In the back of my Impala."
Musically, the song works to perfection. Strong bass line. Strong piano chords. Slowwww beat. And LaMorris, simultaneously singing background and talking voice-over. This is a soul-singing talent as pure as you're going to find anywhere, and "Impala" is a spectacular song. It may take a couple of listenings, but once the hook sets in, the song takes on stadium-like dimensions, and LaMorris--singing and talking foreground, backgrounds and choruses--is its impresario.
How much of this superbly original song is writer/producer Big Yayo's doing? It's obvious he deserves at the very least great credit. The song delivers a wallop that no other song on the CD possesses, while accomplishing a feat that is nigh impossible: delivering a thoroughly Southern Soul song in a stripped-down urban style.
At once instantly accessible and endlessly fascinating, "Impala" is destined to become a Southern Soul classic. If lightning strikes, it could easily cross over as a mainstream hit, every detail intact. In short, "Impala" the song alone is worth the price of the album.
But although essentially an album built around a hit single, Sexy Soul Songs has plenty more.
"Ring On Your Finger"--written, produced and performed by LaMorris--is the next best cut on the CD. LaMorris styles but he's no thug, and the refreshing theme of "Ring" is the excitement of making a woman happy in the most traditional way.
"I want to fill you up
With a lifetime of memories.
Have a couple more babies,
Start our family."
It's just a one-chord chant, which unfortunately is what passes for generic Southern Soul these days, but within its musical limits, "Ring On Your Finger" is enormously effective.
"I'm gonna put that ring on your finger.
Walk you down the line.
Change your name to mine,
Help take care of your child."
The message is moral and upstanding, and yet it's delivered with irreverence and orneriness, with the gusto and passion more often associated with Saturday night than with Sunday morning. Or, the song implies, maybe we're just not accustomed to being mesmerized and seduced by anybody but "bad boys."
Williams' singing--immediately engaging and yet deeply nuanced, an amalgam of gospel, R&B and other influences--is so effortless it's easily taken for granted. But all one has to do in order to appreciate what a rare event it represents is to compare LaMorris' execution with practically any other young performer recording today. LaMorris' confidence and technical mastery are off the chain.
Next up in terms of importance is "Pretty Lady," written and produced by Roger Trapman. Frequently heard of late on Southern Soul radio, the tune always seems a little off-putting with its Strawberry Fields-like, synthesizer-dominated arrangement and vocal distortion. With a singer as good as LaMorris, why is distortion needed? Doesn't it really distract and diminish?
And yet, within the context of the album, "Pretty Lady" comes off as almost central--an accurate summary of the hiphop influences imbedded in the CD. The melody, not to mention the helpful contrast of the uncredited female background-singing, boosts the song's profile and makes it one of the more enduring cuts on the album.
"Make Your Body Roll (Just Roll)," another chant-slash-hook, doesn't work as well as "Ring On Your Finger." Obviously tailored for the dancehall crowd that loves to grind pelvises to ditties like Steve Perry's "Booty Roll," it's the kind of song that should work for LaMorris but doesn't--not the way it does with "Ring," at any rate. It's fun only because it's fascinating to hear more vocal traits from LaMorris's bag of techniques.
"Just For A Little While," "You Made A Way," "Impala (Part 2)" and "One Blessing" complete the album. In "Just For A Little While" LaMorris does something traditional and (compared to the rest of the CD) fairly understated, with good results. The melody and the vocal are exemplary.
"You Made A Man" is similar: a secondary song done effectively by a singer whose "Impala" has gained our interest and patience in practically anything the artist puts his mind to do.
"Impala (Part 2)" is a synthesizer-laced doodling with the album's prize cut. It plays with the "Impala" hook without the meat of the song or the voice-over narration, and basically exists to reinforce the power of the "Impala" theme.
Finally, "One Blessing" closes out the CD with a return to the gospel roots from which LaMorris sprang.
Sexy Soul Songs burns a path into new and original territory. It's a milestone CD--not many come along--and if you're into Southern Soul music, you're going to have to check out "Impala" and come to terms with it. LaMorris Williams is a powerful new addition to the Southern Soul family of artists, and his "Impala" is destined for the "classics" shelf.
--Daddy B. Nice
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May 8, 2010:
B. B. QUEEN: I Can Play Da Blues(Hearon) Three Stars *** Solid Southern Soul Debut by a New Female Vocalist.
After a few close listenings, most CD reviews write themselves in a matter of days. This one--the debut of new female vocalist B. B. Queen--has sat on my desk for months.
Part of the reason may be that I Can Play Da Blues is conceived for what we "racial profilers" (just a joke, folks) in Southern Soul call the "white-blues" or "guitar-slinger" audience.
This immersion in "commercial" blues may not even be a conscious creative decision on the part of producers Don Hearon and Ms. Queen. Musicians, like all people, swim in the oceans in which they've matured.
And yet, for someone with an ear for Southern Soul, the differences may remain off-putting, and not only in the choice of material--obvious blues selections such as "Newsy Neighbors," "I Can Play The Blues" (title cut), "Psychic Lady" and "Talk To The Hand."
There's also the problem of B. B. Queen's voice. We Southern Soul fans are spoiled: we enjoy so many great female singers. B. B. Queen plays a mean guitar (in the B. B. and Albert King mode), but she doesn't sing with the power and precision that Southern Soul fans are accustomed to hearing from divas like Peggy Scott-Adams, Shirley Brown, Denise LaSalle, Nellie "Tiger" Travis, Ms. Jody and Karen Wolfe.
Remember Vanity from the early Prince days? Vanity's voice was airy. it was like looking directly into the sun through cheesecloth. And Vanity's delicate voice seemed to disappear like cheesecloth at times. That's the kind of voice B. B. Queen has.
But that's not to say B. B. Queen's singing is not appealing. On the contrary, while I continued to listen to this album over a longer-than-usual time period, B. B. Queen's vocals always sounded heart-felt and true. And while I was procastinating, the overall quality of the songs on the CD won me over.
By my count there are no less than four memorable songs on the LP, all composed by the writing team of Don Hearon, Aslon, and M. Omar. (I'll make a wild guess that one of the last two is an acronym or pseudonym for B. B. Queen herself.)
They are: "Wobble Wiggle," "All About You," "Ain't Going Your Way" and "I Ain't Your Lady." Not only are these songs inspired efforts, they're arranged and produced with great detail, originality and care.
A pair of the songs cracked Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "Breaking" Singles charts as follows:
FEBRUARY 2010
9. "Ain't Going Your Way"---------------B. B. Queen
If Erykah Badu steered her career back in a "Tyrone"-like Southern Soul direction, she'd sound very much like this Kattman-produced, Las Vegas-based singer.
And. . .
MARCH 2010
7. "I Ain't Your Lady"-----------B. B. Queen
Her work may sound a trifle thin on first listening, but there's undeniable substance to B. B. Queen, in the way there was a substance to Jackie Neal's early efforts.
The references to Erykah Badu and Jackie Neal are telling. B. B. Queen's vocals may be less than spectacular, but they're stirring enough to evoke some pretty good company.
Here's a snapshot of the CD's contents, skipping over three of the lesser songs:
"Wobble Wiggle": catchy song, mid-tempo, nice arrangement, nice guitar lick. Vocal has a Karen Wolfe feel to it--it almost sounds like Karen's singing background, in fact. Also, a tantalizing mix of crowd "background" noise.
"All About You": ballad, beautiful melody, tastefully done. Its guitar hook and its authentic emotion are devastatingly effective. My favorite cut right now.
"Newsy Neighbors": blues, blues.
"I Can Play Da Blues": "Little girls too/ Can play the blues."
"Ain't Going Your Way": another excellent song and arrangement, with a snappy brass section. That horn riffing is like catching a whiff of a jazz club as you're walking down a street. The musical payoff, however, is in B. B.'s atypically well-sung, "Ladies. . . Sisters. . . " Finest vocal performance on the CD.
"I Ain't Your Lady": has a very Southern Soul-sounding hook. (A good thing.) B. B. Queen's best songs seem to be about what she "ain't gonna do."
"Phychic Lady": listening to the song, you realize the title is a typo and it's supposed to be "psychic"--not "fi-chick".
Like Chandra Calloway's recent typo on her single "Lose Sleep," which went out as "Loose Sleep" (the opposite of tight sleep?).
One thing about the blues songs on this LP. They're done well, they're very "listenable," and--perhaps most important--they weave themselves into the fabric of the more original songs to make a tapestry of inter-related music.
Finally, I asked myself, "What, after all, would a Southern Soul Erykah Badu album sound like?" (When Erykah's not busy, of course, parading in downtown Dallas, discarding clothes.) How does B. B. Queen compare with one of the true stars of R&B?
And while I think Erykah's vocals would put B. B. to shame, I don't believe Erykah would come close to the overall success--writing, arranging, producing and, generally speaking, creating a new Southern Soul sound--that B. B. Queen has put together in just her first outing.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced I Can Play Da Blues CD, MP3's .
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April 29, 2010:
AVAIL HOLLYWOOD: The Young Gunn Of Southern Soul (Nlightn) Two Stars ** Dubious Southern Soul Debut by a New Male Vocalist
What makes this hiphop-influenced debut stand out from the countless other CD's vying for attention and space is not only its aggressive assertion to be Southern Soul (see the title) but its promise--via a couple of its best songs--of real Southern Soul to come.
With The Young Gunn Of Southern Soul, the Texarkana-based Avail Hollywood falls short of the accomplishments of true "young guns" like Stevie Jay and LaMorris Williams, who have Southern Soul music seemingly running through their arteries, and who use hiphop only as an external aid to update and refresh the genre.
Avail, at least at this point, has hiphop and urban R&B running through his blood stream, with Southern Soul functioning only as a veneer for marketing. The singer pays homage to "Tuscaloosa, Alabama" and "Jackson, Mississippi" in two of the songs on this set, but it's not in his "genes." There's not a trace of traditional soul or gospel in this music.
Whether or not Avail Hollywood is really conscious of the gap that separates him from the real Southern Soul "young guns" (Sir Charles Jones, T. K. Soul, etc.) is an open question. But Avail's sheer "want-to" and musical competence place him solidly in the ranks of such hiphop-slash-Southern Soul fringe artists as Simeo, Cupid and Rude, albeit not quite at their levels of accomplishment.
The CD jacket shows the artist adorned with a cowboy-style buckle (emblazoned with a Texas longhorn) nearly as large as a professional wrestler's championship belt. Hollywood is not bashful, and when it comes to career-starting milestones, chutzpah and panache count as much as talent.
"Slide-N-It," the primary single from the album, introduces a kind of synthesizer-enhanced vocal, a metallic-sounding tenor that may be Hollywood's real voice with flourishes of reverb. In any case, this unorthodox vocal styling dominates all ten cuts on the disc.
"Slide-N-It" has energy and verve, and it's put together well. The song has received some air play from traditional Southern Soul media, but it hasn't struck the kind of chord that will secure Hollywood a solid audience. What it does possess in spades is a confidence--even brashness--that augers well for the future.
"Let's Get Raw" is pure urban hiphop. If you watch BET you've heard this ballad--actually more of a slow-jam chant--a thousand times before via R. Kelly and many others.
The mid-tempo "Show Me What You're Working With" continues to showcase Hollywood's curious vocal sound, achieved ostensibly with one of those voice-distortion devices.
"Sexy Cover Girl" returns to the same urban-influenced melody of "Let's Get Raw." Like his references to Southern Soul sanctuaries like Jackson, Mississippi, Avail knows how to sprinkle this song with Southern Soul conventions. Here he reprises the old saw--"one leg in the east, one leg in the west"--but these nods to Southern Soul conventions lose most of their power against the hiphop essence of the song.
"Don't Leave Me" is the closest thing to a Southern Soul ballad on the CD. Here Avail finally pounces upon a true "meat and potatoes" song and does a good job with it, with a distinguished bass line and the estimable melody carried along by a tasteful and succinct guitar hook and a pleasant horn background. If Avail truly wants to make Southern Soul music, he needs to go in the direction this song beckons.
"Touch It" is "Slide-N-It" recycled and "A Million Ways" ("I want your body")--two versions of which close out the CD--is hiphop/urban all the way. Like the vast majority of hiphop material, you can't really call this a melody. It's a chant, the same elementary-chorded slow jam you hear every day on urban radio and done much better by the Ushers and Wests of the rap world. Actually, the rap-over by Bigg Charlse is the cut's most interesting ingredient.
The Young Gunn Of Southern Soul CD shows promise, but it is definitely not the kind of Southern Soul to warm the hearts of chitlin' circuit fans. If Avail is as serious about making a name for himself in the Southern Soul world as he appears to be, he needs to follow the path he's laid down in "Don't Leave Me." That's where his true soul shines through.
--Daddy B. Nice
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March 29, 2010:
PAT COOLEY: Cougar (L & L) Three Stars *** Solid. The artist's fans will enjoy.
Experimenting with a wide range of styles, the talented Southern Soul singer Pat Cooley has nevertheless steadily and surely carved out a singular identity for herself with three albums in the last three years. Pat's dominant singles over that period reflect her eclecticism.
"I Ain't Going Where You Go" (from Real Thing) is disco-tinged Candi Stanton--even Donna Sumner--like. "Older Woman, Younger Man" is pure Southern Soul in the vein of O. B. Buchana's "Back Up Lover." And "Boy Toy" (from Boy Toy) is as pop as Annette Funicello.
The newest CD, Cougar, starts off with a riff and arrangement that is done much better on the third cut, "Get Out," the first single from the CD. "Get Out" (Daddy B. Nice's Top Ten Breaking Singles, March 2010) grafts the "Cougar" song onto a more sophisticated guitar riff and pares down the noise around Cooley's vocal, which is a marvel of rocking, leather-slapping toughness.
Pat Cooley shows off a worthy soulfulness on the pop-influenced tune "Hold Still" as well, her inherent straightforwardness just as compelling when she's using it in a romantic and tender way.
One of the pleasures of listening to Cooley is the little jabs to the memory her songs give the soul fan who harks back a decade or two. (Cooley first recorded back then.) There's a little Barbara Lewis here, a little Adina Howard there--sounds that are as indispensable as they currently are rare.
Not as special are the tunes "Haters" (when's the last time you heard a "haters" song that was any good) and "Hungry Woman" (a bar blues on which Cooley sounds uncharacteristically restrained).
But the CD quickly regains balance with the beautiful "Hold Still," the Bill Withers' remake "Use Me," and the interesting "Be A Man," a serious message delivered in first-rate fashion by Ms. Cooley, who is almost always convincingly real.
Here she's in that deep domestic territory Karen Wolfe explored so well last year. And "Be A Man" also boasts a Latin-tinged, acoustic guitar-based arrangement that lends the song an endearing originality.
The CD closes with "Dance It Down," which dancing-wise is actually less hypnotic than the fantastic "Get Out"; the falsetto-scaled "I Can't Stop Loving You," which more than any divas recalls male crooners like Little Anthony and Curtis Mayfield; and "Everyday With You," whose "Boy Toy"-like melody and arrangement is refashioned to celebrate a grown man.
But these songs--although not without charm--are nothing to write home about.
Your Daddy B. Nice must confess to going back and reading the track listings for Pat Cooley's first two albums many times in the course of this review. I was looking for Cooley's chitlin' circuit hit, "Older Woman Younger Man." I couldn't find it. (DBN Note: "Older Woman Younger Man was published on Bigg Robb's Blues Soul And Old School .)
It's not on this album either. With "Older Woman," this new disc would certainly be approaching five-star territory. The title cut of Pat Cooley's Cougar is okay, with a big underline, but it doesn't take the album over the top, the way, for instance, Nellie "Tiger" Travis's "I'm A Woman" boosted that CD a couple of years ago. And any title cut that doesn't give its CD a boost ends up giving into the laws of gravity.
Readers can sample the songs on Cougar and decide for themselves whether it's worth the fairly hefty album price ($15). For the MP3-crowd, the undisputed keepers are "Get Out," "Hold Still," "Use Me" and "Be A Man." That being said, this disc is Pat Cooley's best and most consistent yet.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Cougar CD
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February 14, 2010:
STEPHANIE PICKETT: Finally Made It (CDS) Two Stars ** Dubious Southern Soul Debut by a New Female Vocalist
Is this an artist ready for Southern Soul stardom? Forgive me for going against the prevailing consensus, but I just don't think so. Stephanie Pickett's debut CD, Finally Made It, won the Best New Artist in the Blues Critic 2009 Southern Soul Blues Readers' Poll.
But the impression of the CD hereabouts is that it's an effort that would have been better served by much more stringent choice of material and much more disciplined and strenuous standards of singing. If Finally Made It were truly the best new product that Southern Soul music had to offer in 2009, it would be hard to tout the genre as a unique and original alternative to today's urban/smooth R&B.
"Still Want You Baby" sets the tone and the bar for the entire album: a kind of middle-of-the-road soul, with a material and a delivery that sounds derivative and homogenized, with little to set it apart from the hundreds of other female R&B aspirants in the year just passed.
"Let's Get It Together" is a better effort. Pickett is more relaxed, and the melody is passable, and the drums are wonderful, and the arrangement has a nice, bubbling synth hook, but some element of accomplishment is lacking, and it's hard not to fault the vocal.
On the majority of the tunes on the album, Pickett has the power of a background singer, but not the force of a first-rate singer. She reminds me of longtime background singer Brenda Williams, a Morris Williams-produced artist whose 2009 album went unnoticed for arguably some of the same reasons, although without any of the hype given Pickett's Finally Made It.
"Love Me Right" is a mish-mash of countless urban R&B ballads by female singers from Mariah Carey to Kelly Price. There is litte of interest to the true-blue Southern Soul fan: the fan who revels, for instance, in the recent work of Karen Wolfe or Lacee Reed.
"Money Talks" is a mid-tempo tune that breaks the languor and inertia of the above-mentioned tracks, but we've heard this song so many times before, most recently by Lou Wilson. Nothing in the vocal grabs the material by the shoulders and lifts it to a new and interesting level.
"Time Heals All Wounds" returns to the slightly-drowsy, slightly-weepy R&B of "Still Want You Baby" and "Love Me Right." Here Stephanie Pickett delivers what might be considered a journeywoman's peformance. The notes are on tune, the sincerity is obvious, but there's no vocal force to lift the cut above the ordinary.
"I'm In The Right Mood" returns to a "Money Talks" mid-tempo vein, with a funk-based rhythm section, but once again the vocal doesn't transform the material to a level that would warrant attention. One can imagine a Bobby "Blue" Bland or a Bobby Rush morphing this song into a blues treat of the first order, but Stephanie Pickett can't make that claim.
The ballad "Can't Get You Off My Mind" is better. The vocal is a bit more convincing and personable. Here and there, the listener can detect hints of the kind of singer Stephanie Pickett could become.
"Run'n" may be the best raw material in this collection of fairly-anemic songwriting, but even "Run'n" isn't completely successful. Again, one is tempted to search for comparisons. What would this song sound like if Lacee or--say--Sheba Potts-Wright were singing it? Carl Sims might have turned it into a blockbuster.
Stephanie Pickett makes a stab at it. As the song progresses, the choruses in particular show a little of the charisma that is necessary in the highly-competitive Southern Soul market.
But as the album exits with yet another undistinguished slow jam, "Stay With Me," it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that Stephanie Pickett, in stark contrast to the album title "finally made it," is not yet ready for prime time.
As "Stay With Me" moves into a gospel-like finale, you can hear Stephanie Pickett finally putting some of her inner strength and soul on the line. Why she waits until the last cut is perplexing.
And it's hard not to wonder what might have been if the producers had demanded more of the artist. The listener is left with the impression a new artist is being rushed to the "show" without all of the tools, be it in the material or the performance.
The Blues Critic synopsis cites the influences of Shirley Brown and Aretha Franklin, but those comparisons are far-fetched. In fact, there's only one cut on the album in which Stephanie Pickett's vocal bears the stamp of originality: "Family Man."
This radio cut--the only bona fide Southern Soul keeper on the disc--did not impress on first hearing. The lyrics are very good, though, describing a "family man" who isn't the kind who "provides for his family" but who wants to sleep with everyone:
"He wants to sleep with me,
My sister and my brother,
He wants to sleep with my whole family."
This is really the only song on the album in which producer Carl Marshall takes over and jams, and it shows. Even though there is no melody line of any kind, the in-your-face arrangement, replete with all kinds of novel bells and whistles, ultimately wins over the listener.
And most remarkably, the song and the arrangement pushes the singer. The result is by far Stephanie Pickett's best performance on the CD. It's the only song on the album to which one can say, "Oh, that's who she is. That's what she does."
If Stephanie Pickett indeed has the goods--and she may yet prove she does--I think she has been done a disservice by her collaborators. This album gives too much evidence of a coddled environment, a studio in which too many people were patting the singer on the back when they should have been pushing her to greater focus and intensity.
--Daddy B. Nice
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January 30, 2010:
LEE ROY: Should Have Called (Artizen Records) Three Stars *** Solid Southern Soul Debut by a New Male Vocalist.
It's always nice to discover an artist before they discover you--that is, hear them on the radio and say, "I like that," before they or someone promoting them gets to you with the hype.
That was the way it worked out last year with the music of young Lee Roy Ward, whose name I at first didn't know--and, after I did know, couldn't spell.
The song that caught my attention was a remake of the oft-recorded (Ernestine Anderson, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Marva Wright, to name only a few) "Never Make Your Move Too Soon," the B. B. King standard written by Stix Hooper and Will Jennings.
The contemporary Southern Soul audience is undoubtedly most familiar with the excellent rendition of the tune by Lynn White, "I Didn't Make My Move Too Soon."
Lee Roy's twist on the old message is embodied with the refrain that commences the song:
"You can't wait.
Can't hesitate
Because if you do
You might be too late."
And the first verse tells the whole story:
"Walked in the club,
And there she was.
I didn't know
If I should say hello.
Went to the bar,
Got me a drink
So I could think.
I turned around.
This guy was all up
In her face.
Uh-oh. I think I
Made my move too late."
Lee Roy boasts a deceptively easy-going R&B voice that is actually quite potent. And one wouldn't normally expect this level of awareness of the musical nuances of delta-based Southern Soul music from someone based in Dallas, Texas. Lee Roy must have some Ward relatives in Mississippi. It's either in his blood or he's listened to the real thing for a good long time.
That's not to say Lee Roy is imitative or derivative. He doesn't remind you of anybody in particular, although there's a little Tyrone Davis and a little Billy "Soul" Bonds and a little Carl Sims in his approach.
His relatively high Southern Soul IQ is reinforced on the title cut from Lee Roy's debut album, Should Have Called. In "Should Have Called," which appeared as a single late last year, Lee Roy is a two-woman man, and as every man who's taken on this kind of action-slash-responsibility knows, it's a world of stress.
"I was at a party late last night
With my other woman,
Everything was going right
Until I seen her walk through my door
It was my wife
I knew it was time to go
She had this kind of look on her face
That told me I'd better leave this place
I wish she would have called
Before she came over.
I wish she would have called me on my cell phone
Before she came over."
I don't cite the lyrics as evidence that Lee Roy has mastered the art of finding the "sweet spot" of Southern Soul. Anyone can write the routine "player" lyrics. What authenticates what Lee Roy does in "Should Have Called" is in the music: specifically, the front-and-center vocal (which is like ear-candy) the perfectly complementary guitar riff and the texture of the arrangement, in which impeccable detail is given to the background vocals and the mix.
As every singer worth his salt knows, having the right background singer--and the correct background-singing arrangement--is a big part of being a successful singer. And unless you're Marvin Sease, with three or four young ladies continually at your beck and call, the young artist usually dubs his or her own voice over the primary truck. (In concert, it can be simulated by hired back-up singers.) It's the composite of upfront and background vocals that makes up the identity of any popular singer in the public's imagination.
Lee Roy has a knack for background vocals and choruses, and arrangements in general. He and his cohorts--producer Timothy Michael Young, Chester Burns on guitar, and Terrance Moore on keyboards and brass, among others--have done their homework. And so I was curious to see what the full CD had to offer.
The message is mixed. On the one hand, there's nothing quite as accessible as "Move Too Late" or "Should Have Called"; on the other, there are no obvious mis-steps.
"Anybody Need Love," a ballad, is followed by a mid-tempo stint, "Good Girl." "Sooner Or Later" has a funk hook I should remember but can't and a funk-style arrangement projected through the smokey lense of a Southern Soul filter.
"Waiting On The Moonlight" is a rocking-chair kind of ballad, with a beguiling tempo and some interesting vocal improvisation. "Come Back," "Keep The Move On" and "Whenever You Need Me" constitute fairly rote uptempo stuff.
If I had to choose a possible third single and potential hit from the album, I could do worse than pick "I"m Going Back To My Momma's House." It's a straightforward, almost mainstream-sounding song, sung in a straightforward, lounge-singer's fashion.
And yet it has a relatively unique theme--going back to Momma--done in a style that seems more sincere than satirical. The song isn't played for humor, and there are no apologies or guilt or even self-deprecation for being a "momma's boy."
Must be a big house. Must be a great Momma.
Solid debut, Lee Roy.
--Daddy B. Nice
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