Luther Lackey
Daddy B. Nice's #81 ranked Southern Soul Artist
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Luther LackeyDaddy B. Nice's #81 ranked Southern Soul Artist |
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"Scared Of Getting Caught" Luther Lackey Composed by Luther Lackey May 1, 2010:
--Daddy B. Nice About Luther Lackey Luther Lackey is the brother of O. B. Buchana (now that's a talented family)and hails from the same home town as Buchana, blues-rich Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Song's Transcendent Moment "I'm just scared.
Tidbits 1. "God Help That Southern Boy," a new country-western song from an upcoming album of the same name, appeared in May of 2006 under the name of Luther Lackey. For anyone who doubted Lackey's far-reaching scope and brashness, the CD was a wake-up call, and for Southern Soul's insiders the song and CD will prove a litmus test.
LUTHER LACKEY: Jody's Got My Problems! (Ecko) Two Stars ** Dubious. Not much here.In 2008 Luther Lackey stunned the Southern Soul music world with an album of cutting-edge originality--I Should Have Stayed Scared (Ecko)--a disc that raked in just about every year-end award your Daddy B. Nice could throw at it, including Best Male Southern Soul Vocalist of 2008; Best Southern Soul Arranger/Producer of 2008; and honorable mentions in two other prestigious award categories, Best Southern Soul CD Of 2008 and Best Southern Soul Songwriter of 2008.And if I were writing this review at this time last year, I'd be giving I Should Have Stayed Scared that rarest of all ratings: Five Stars ***** Can't miss. Pure Southern Soul heaven. More's the pity, because a little more than half a year later, with superior cuts from the Should Have Stayed Scared CD like "Number Two" barely scratching the surface of Southern Soul radio airplay, and with little promotion for the CD (no singles push with chitlin' circuit deejays, no touring to back up any of the airplay), Luther Lackey has arrived with a new CD--Jody's Got My Problems! (Ecko)--that seems both ill-timed and ill-tempered. Evidently, the financial results of the I Should Have Stayed Scared CD were disappointing. Thus, the impatient young artist, perhaps rendered woozy with self-importance by the praise lavished upon last year's CD, whipped up another collection as fast as possible, with very little thought to anything but "gettin' what's his." Jody's Got My Problems! starts with a lecture disguised as humor. Luther dons a wig (cover photo) and impersonates his mama (Mama Southern Soul) in order to berate the audience for not buying her son's CD in sufficient numbers. Track two, the title cut, has all the signs of a song intended for single status, but--like many of the CD's songs--remains disjointed, and doesn't quite come together. On Track three, "Can't Read Your Mind," Luther sounds like Sly on his druggy, distracted downside. Track four, "I Can't Get Back In The House," displays the curious spectacle of Luther appropriating the old Bobby Womack/Rod Stewart riff from "(If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It" and "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" and quite untypically doing little to nothing with it. By the time one gets to Track five, "Get Out Of My Bed" (which is reprised later in the CD), one is seriously beginning to wonder if Luther Lackey has lost all bearings and a clear commitment to his artistic identity. On the I Should Have Stayed Scared CD Luther was as close to the bulls-eye of artistic breakthrough (and artistic identity) as Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley. He had a rich, choral sound that softened his vocal and emotional eccentricities. It was a formula which, although controversial and avant-garde, seemed destined to reap ever-growing numbers of fans. On this much more minimalist and melancholic album those tics stand out like a skinny guy's elbows. (You'll remember that Mr. Zay made the better, and more popular, version of Lackey's classic, "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday," because he was more willing to record a conventional, audience-pleasing version. Luther Lackey's version was much more personal and unconventional, a kind of roller-coaster vocal style that demanded the audience come to him rather than him come to the audience. This struggle between staying true to himself or giving the audience what it wants has become a difficult dynamic for Lackey to solve.) Track six, "I Thought The Baby Was Mine," (Daddy B. Nice's #8 Southern Soul Single, May 2009), is the most direct reflection of the Should Have Stayed Scared CD, and one hears the first bars with their cantankerous vocal sincerity (a Lackey trademark) with grateful relief. This is, after all, the closest to the Lackey identity forged since "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday." "Mama At The Drive Through" is a not-funny interlude. Compare these supposedly humorous inserts with a couple of minutes of Bobby Rush talking on record and you'll realize how forced and transparent the humor really is. It's followed by "Dip And Roll," in which the opening bars promise something great. But Lackey puts the brakes on the tempo just when it's beginning to swing and give the audience that pleasure Lackey perversely wants to withhold, and the track morphs into a strange, morbid musical phrase before it even gets to the chorus pay-off. It's like you've gone onto the club dance floor, stimulated by a danceable riff, only to find yourself in a haunted house. "Dirty Heffa" (Daddy B. Nice's #7 Southern Soul Single, June 2009), continues the druggy, Slylike style. The verse is intriguing vocally, with Luther vamping a nice-sounding, near-rap monologue, but the song's chorus is once again minimal and curiously unsatisfying. The sound is harsh and ultra-modern, Luther Lackey becoming the Lenny Bruce of Southern Soul. "Let Me Get In It" harks back to what Lackey's fans admire: great melody, vocal, chorus, and arrangement, but it's a clone of "I Should Have Stayed Scared," which takes away a little of its allure. "Talking On The Telephone" is nothing to remember. "Get Out Of My Bed" (the reprise) reminds your Daddy B. Nice that Luther Lackey has yet to be successful (not unlike a lot of other Southern Soul balladeers, Sir Charles Jones among them) at recording a good fast song. This one is banal. In fact, the best stab Lackey makes at good "fast" may be the verses (not the choruses) of "Dirty Heffa," which have a hypnotic, trancelike effect. It's called mesmerizing the audience (see Latimore, Carl Marshall, etc.) Finally, and very unfortunately, the CD ends with another lecture on bootlegging. What? (you ask). Oh yes, you will have to listen to this tirade even if you have put down good money for the privilege. And, in case you didn't get the album's message prior to the final two tracks--"(Outro) Mama Southern Soul" and "Please Mr. Bootleg"--Luther delivers a naked threat: "You're gonna make me stop singing this Southern Soul." Where does Luther Lackey get off whining about how much money he's making in Southern Soul? Doesn't anyone working within this genre know upfront that we're making pauper's wages or throwing money down a hole? And why does he think it's interesting? This album is too full of bile and bitterness, with Lackey's usual caustic wit in the service of dark-side forces. Maybe it's simpler to say the songs are not very good. In any case, I think posterity will see Jody's Got My Problems! as the out-takes from the I Should Have Stayed Scared album. I went back to I Should Have Stayed Scared. The first cut reminded me that the album wasn't perfect and that those "haunted" fast songs didn't appear suddenly with the Jody's Got My Problems! disc. But beginning with the second track, "Number Two," I Should Have Stayed Scared propels the listener to a sphere of overwhelming beauty: an eccentric balladeer surfing upon one poignant, real-life wave (or tale) after another. That cluster of songs--"Number Two," "I Don't Care Who's Gettin' It," "I Should Have Stayed Scared," "The Blues Is Alright," and "New Orleans Blues"--is as good as it gets. The last four songs on the album fall off a bit, but led by "She's Tired Of Me," they admirably sustain the overall feeling of sumptious soul. I Should Have Stayed Scared is a gift from God or whatever higher power you believe in, funneled through a receptive artist. Its narrator--Luther Lackey--is in a beautiful spiritual place. Jody's Got My Problems! is egocentric, an unfortunate, post-classic burp, hopefully just a hiccup after the feast in a long and eventually storied career. --Daddy B. Nice ************************ 6. April 11, 2010: LUTHER LACKEY: The Preacher's Wife (Ecko) Five Stars ***** Can't Miss. Pure Southern Soul Heaven."He's sharp as a whip and volatile," I wrote about Luther Lackey in 2008, the same year Luther won the Daddy B. Nice Award for Best Male Southern Soul Vocalist, and they're still the truest words I can find to characterize this under-appreciated artist.Besides his one-of-a-kind singing, Lackey's other primary strength is his songwriting. He first appeared on the Southern Soul scene as the composer of the melodic and moving "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday," the song that put Mr. Zay on the map. The strong writing statement ("I Should Have Stayed Scared," "Number Two," "I Don't Care Who's Gettin' It") in Lackey's 2008 album, I Should Have Stayed Scared, made that CD a finalist for album of the year. But in 2010, even among chitlin' circuit fans, Luther Lackey is still mostly an unknown quantity. He doesn't tour much, his vocals at this point are still arguably an "acquired taste," and he hasn't scored the really big hit that would make him a "name." Luther's new CD, The Preacher's Wife, may not have that career-defining hit either, but as a whole it's easily the most rocking, listenable, inventive album to fill my post office box yet this year. "It Ain't Easy Being The Preacher's Wife" (the title cut), the first radio single, announces from its opening notes that this CD will be a musical experience of the first order. The music is superb, a soulful mixture of rock and r&b and gospel, and the vocal (or vocals--Lackey always does his own background singing) is assured if idiosyncratic. However, the "magic" single to put Luther Lackey over the top might as well be any number of a half-dozen songs from the generous LP, including the swinging, string-drenched "If She's Cheating On Me, I Don't Wanna Know," a wonder of a melody set to a great rhythm track. Along with the slow and stately "What It Takes To Get Her Is What It Takes To Keep Her," these songs from the CD all reference, either directly or indirectly, recent Southern Soul hits and preoccupations. "The Preacher's Wife" echoes Vick Allen's recent "Forbidden Love Affair" (not to mention Lenny Williams and many others). "If She's Cheating On Me I Don't Wanna Know" delves into the same subject as the popular Tre' Williams' & The Revelations' "I Don't Wanna Know." And "What It Takes To Get Her Is What It Takes To Keep Her" is a reworking of Sir Charles Jones' "Same Thing (It Took To Get Her)." The songs gain a certain resonance from the associations, but they're not derivative in any other sense. Lackey's songs inhabit a world all of their own. You may not like the world, but you'll know it's Luther Lackey and nobody else. Not only are Lackey's songs marvels of musical composition. The lyrics are unfailingly rich in detail, often witty or humorous, with a storyteller's relish in narrative. The anthemic "Mister Can I Shine Your Shoes"--yet another possible single--begins with the lines: "You heard me sing back in sixty-five. Said you'd never heard singing like that in your life. Gave me five hundred dollars and a bottle of wine, And said put your name on the dotted line." The unflinching, grab-you-by-the-collar immediacy in the first two lines--at first it sounds arrogant but then you realize it's just the truth--and the career history captured in the pithy last couplet illustrate Lackey's knack for realism and compression. There are two or three songs of filler on The Preacher's Wife, but they are more than compensated by an unusually generous palette of rich material. The atmospheric "Your Change Will Come," with its whiff of saxaphone and Isley-style lead guitar, complete with guitar break, is one of the most affecting of Lackey's ballads. Another ballad, "The Kind Of Love That Lasts," is as pure and uplifting as the best vintage street-corner doowop. If Lackey's latest effort has a flaw, it's probably the continued lack of a knock-out fast song. That elusive uptempo track may be just what Luther needs to eventually break through to a wider audience. This CD's stab at a good fast song is "I Got Caught Butt Naked," which Luther sings as unintelligibly as Mick Jagger ever did in his prime. If you didn't know the name of the title, you would never be able to glean it from listening to the lyrics. I confess to liking "Butt Naked" better than most of Lackey's attempts at the brash side, but I also confess to wanting to skip over it on occasion (the song is done twice on the CD) to soak in the healing waters of Lackey's mid-tempo and slow-tempo offerings. Whether "Butt Naked's" repetitive funky hook will catch on will be interesting to monitor. My guess is that in spite of its inspired, brass-spiffy chorus, Luther's breakthrough dance song is still ahead of him. In the meantime, there is so much else to enjoy in The Preacher's Wife, a carnival of little miracles to make your feet tap and your smile twitch. Like this one, from "If She's Cheating On Me, I Don't Wanna Know": "She said she's going on a cruise. I said it's about time for me and you. She told me, 'No, no. It's for me and my friends. There ain't nobody Gonna bring no men.'" But wait--it gets even better. "And I said, 'Baby, I'm going to miss you.' She said, 'Is that right? I'm going to miss me too.'" --Daddy B. Nice Bargain-Priced The Preacher's Wife CD ********************* If You Liked. . . You'll Love If you liked Gladys Knight and the Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia," you'll love Luther Lackey's "Scared Of Getting Caught." Honorary "B" Side "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday" |
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