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April 28, 2012:
Queen Emily: Queen Emily Sings EP (Malaco) w/ Preview of Queen Emily: Queen Emily CD (UK ONLY by Nova Sales, UK)(TBR in US by Malaco) Four Stars **** Distinguished Southern Soul Debut by a New Female Vocalist Queen Emily Sings is a head-turning, four-song EP published by Malaco Records, which in addition to swearing off Southern Soul in 2011 experienced the extraordinary misfortune of having its studio facilities in north Jackson, Mississippi destroyed by a tornado.
The extra-play set marks the debut of Emily David, a Houston-bred, Stockton, California-based housewife who gained fame as a contestant on the TV talent show "America's Got Talent" singing, among other things, Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools."
Listen to Queen Emily singing "Chain Of Fools" on America's Got Talent on YouTube.
The video has logged over one million plays, a rare accomplishment for a contemporary, tradition-rich, rhythm and blues record. Tommy Couch, Jr. was so taken with the raw talent of Ms. David, who (now famously) gave up a musical career to raise children--both her own and her sister's--that he signed her to a contract sight unseen. For Emily, who finished as a semi-finalist, the reward of her talent-show experience WAS the Malaco signing.
"I think around a year after the show, Tommy Couch from Malaco Records made a call to me out of the blue saying 'We wanna record you, and we wanna give you a contract!," Emily told "Blues & Soul Magazine's" Pete Lewis last year.
"And I was like 'Get OUTTA here!' You know, they had so much confidence in me, they signed me before even MEETING me! Like I signed the contract with Malaco talking to Tommy over the phone after he'd faxed it to me in Las Vegas!"
Queen Emily has a strength and range most divas only dream of, but the greater significance of her debut is being swept up by Southern Soul's flagship label. No one knows better than Southern Soul performers how elusive a contract with Malaco is.
Musical purists who keep Southern Soul music at arm's length (based on the electronic instrumentation) openly embrace Malaco Records, and justifiably so, because Malaco publishes music with professional--even lavish--care in the grand tradition of Stax, Hi and Muscle Shoals. The company's credentials are impeccable (Johnnie Taylor, Z. Z Hill, etc.), as is the label's orbit of producers, writers and studio musicians (Frederick Knight, Harrison Calloway, etc).
With powerful vocals and stellar backgrounds, the Queen Emily Sings EP leaves the competition far behind. Which is not to say the extended play disc is perfect.
True-blue Southern Soul fans will recognize a conservative approach to the song selection, with a decided bent toward the academic and uplifting as opposed to the brazen, below-the-belt craziness of more low-brow southern soul.
Johnnie Taylor's "Still Crazy," Bill Withers' "Use Me" and Bobby "Blue" Bland's "No Way To Say Good-Bye" are given reverential covers along with a remake of a recent contemporary country hit by James Otto entitled "Just Got Started Loving You."
Left largely untapped and undiscovered is what Queen Emily would sound like singing original material. If Emily lacks anything, it is an identity--at present she's a young-Lebron-like goliath of raw artistry.
That's why the Queen Emily CD--Extended Version, released in England last year (still to be released in the U.S.) will whet fans' appetites even more.
It combines the four songs from the American-released EP with eight more tunes recorded for Malaco in the same sessions. The best place to sample Queen Emily's England-based Queen Emily CD is on Amazon, which furnishes a full list of the titles and samples.
The sheer amount of studio talent brought together on this 12-song set (including the four songs from the Queen Emily EP) comprises a "Who's Who" of vintage and contemporary Southern Soul, including Tommy Couch, Jr., Frederick Knight, Harrison Calloway, Vick Allen, James Robertson, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, Reggie Young, Clayton Ivy, Tonya Youngblood and Wolf Stevenson.
The selections break down as follows:
1. "Just Got Started Loving You"
The cover of the former #1 contemporary country single by James Otto, also on the EP. Produced by Tommy Couch, Jr.
2. "Use Me"
The cover of the Bill Withers standard--from the Still Bill CD, 1972--also on the EP. Produced by Couch.
3. "Hold You To Your Promise"
A remake of Don Covay's single from his CD, Checkin' In With Don Covay. Composed by Paul Kelly.
4. "Angel In Your Arms"
A cover of Millie Jackson's classic.
5. "Throw Me Away"
A George Jackson-written song that to your Daddy B. Nice's knowledge has never been recorded. British fans have singled out this song as one of their favorites.
6. "Don't You Know"
A mid-tempo song written and produced by Stax/Malaco legend Frederick Knight.
7. "Going Crazy"
A cover of Willie Clayon's recent classic, written by Clayton, from his Malaco-released Full Circle album.
8. "Your Used To Be"
A ballad written by Frederick Knight and David Camon, produced by Knight. Another favorite in the U.K.
9. "I Betcha Didn't Know That"
Written by Frederick Knight and Sam Dees, produced by Frederick Knight. KC & The Sunshine Band recorded it back in the 70's, and it also garnered some reggae covers.
10. "Still Crazy"
A cover of the Johnnie Taylor standard, produced by Tommy Couch, Jr. Taylor's version graced the Malaco sampler The Last Soul Company. Queen Emily's first American single, a Southern Soul chart-topper in 2011 (also on the EP).
11. "Keep Gettin' Up"
Frederick Knight wrote and produced this uptempo track. Here is how Emily described her experiences working with Frederick Knight to "Blues & Soul's Lewis::
"He was just a great guy--though we did record his songs a little differently, in that I had to sing the lines in exactly the way he told me to. So we'd do it like word-for-word, line-for-line; then we'd stop, and he'd be like 'Can you sing this line right here like that?'... Which was very difficult for me. Because he was very firm and he didn't play in the studio at ALL! He just got right down to business! But in the end I learnt a lot FROM him, and his songs came out sounding great... And the fact that I was standing there with the man that wrote (1979 worldwide disco smash) 'Ring My Bell'--a song I grew up with and that I'd been singing all my life--and he was writing songs for ME, was just a wonderful feeling!"
12. "No Easy Way To Say Good-Bye"
The Bobby "Blue" Bland classic, composed by Frank-O Johnson, reworked by Emily. Also on the EP, whose liner notes indicate Bland's blessings :
"Queen Emily can sing with me any time. She puts plenty of feeling in her singing. She means it... she's makin' the lyrics mean something to everybody listening. Emily's got plenty of soul...and I can tell she's got class."
In her "Blues & Soul Magazine" interview Queen Emily also addressed what her goals for the debut CD were and what the experience of working with the best in the business was like:
"I knew that there weren't too many people today singing this type of Southern soul that goes way back to the Seventies and Sixties. So I basically wanted to let people know that there ARE still some great soul singers out there and that they shouldn't forget about this type of music. Because this is exactly the kinda music I grew UP with! You know, I remember running through the apartment with my mom sitting there with her friends, listening to Aretha Franklin, Bobby Bland, Z.Z. Hill? So yeah, the fact that that music is now coming out again, and that I'm the one that's gonna have a lot to do with bringing it back to the forefront is a great FEELING!"
And on working with Malaco's legendary figures and the fabled Muscle Shoals studio musicians:
"When I first went in the studio and opened my mouth, Clayton Ivey--the keyboardist--was like 'Wow! We have somebody in here that we don't have to tune up! You have RAW TALENT!.. You know, he RECOGNISED that!"
The string sections (usually arranged by Harrison Calloway) and brass sections (usually arranged by Frederick Knight) on this Queen Emily debut are perhaps the most telling difference in the quality of this Malaco release vs. average CD's by other indie Southern Soul labels.
Time and again, we critics and fans are told by run-of-the-mill producers (and artists acting as their own producers) that the latest synthesized horns are state-of-the-art, indistinguishable from the real thing, when of course they aren't. The comments are really rationalizations, and we lovers of the Southern Soul sound are left wondering why--with sax players, for example, willing to work for near-free inhabiting nearly every city block in America--the cost of incorporating live horns (or strings) is so prohibitive.
Listen, for instance, to the horn charts carrying the melody in George Jackson's "Throw Me Away" and you'll be transported in time to your finest memories of Southern Soul songs heard unexpectedly over the radio.
What the addition of these precious background elements really requires is organization and commitment to excellence--all of which takes time, often equated with money--and here's where the collaboration of this fiercely-endowed new singer, Emily David, and Southern Soul's fickle flagship label really becomes a match made in Southern Soul Heaven.
That Europeans have been listening to these future Queen Emily classics for nearly a year already under the unfamiliar guise of "deep soul" while we Americans are still deprived of our own home-grown Southern Soul product is one of the more bitter ironies of the current scene.
But Malaco's Tommy Couch, Jr. tells your Daddy B. Nice the full Queen Emily CD will be released in the United States by "probably late summer." This may translate to a realistic release happening before year's end. Good news indeed. Until then, the Queen Emily Sings EP is an enticing taste of the lady who signifies to be Southern Soul's next big thing.
--Daddy B. Nice
Queen Emily Sings EP on I-Tunes
Queen Emily Sings EP at CD Universe
Queen Emily CD--Extended Version (UK) at CD Universe
Queen Emily CD Extended Version (UK) on Amazon
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April 3, 2012:
PAT COOLEY: Talking To You (L & L) Four Stars **** Distinguished Effort. Should please old fans and gain new.  Fans of Pat Cooley and her classic single, "Older Woman, Younger Man" (from Bigg Robb's Blues, Soul & Old School LP) may be surprised to discover she has left her talented former composer/producer Frank McKinney to strike out into new musical territory. McKinney wrote "Be A Man" and "Get Out" (among others) from Cooley's most recent (and first-rate) album, Cougar.
Then fans will put on the first track of Pat's newest disc, Talking To You, and possibly do another double-take as Cooley lathers up a new version of B. B. King's "Paying The Cost To Be The Boss." It turns out that Pat Cooley's in a bluesy mood, and she's found another collaborator, Rob Harris, to enable her new direction.
Not only does "Paying The Cost" give notice that the eclectic Ms. Cooley won't take any "guff" from a man who's not paying the bills. It sets the tone for an entire set in which Cooley's bound and determined to give her fans a taste of something different: a hard-edged R&B descended not only from the Boss but the Queen.
Queen Ann Peeble's "I Didn't Take Your Man" hovers over this album like a patron saint, and writer/producer Harris furnishes Cooley with material that is both faithful to the Hi Records sound and freshly-minted.
Talking To You, the title cut, is arguably one of the weakest cuts, simply because it appears to be diluted for radio single air play under the rationale of "trying to please everybody," which more often than not ends up "pleasing no one especially." Which is not to say it isn't a radio-worthy track--just that it doesn't pack a visceral punch.
Most of the other tracks on the CD do. They are uncompromisingly potent, bluesy rockers that grab your attention like a river whose current and depth are powerful and dangerous enough to carry away the fragile and faint of heart.
Your Daddy B. Nice's favorite cut is "Dirt Road Double Wide." Harris and Cooley seem to like it, too, because they remix it for a second outing on the album's finale. Cooley is in great form, comfortable, tough and businesslike (the business of the blues, that is), and Harris provides a "Clean Up Lady"-like guitar riff and foot-stomping, horn-driven arrangement that hits the nail on the head with a sledgehammer.
Similarly, "Bring It Baby," in which Pat is--
"(I'm) Burning with fire,
I'm so full of desire,"
--vamps to a thick, Rolling Stones-like rhythm section and Keith Richards-style guitar.
The album is a two-person project--Cooley does all the singing, foreground and background, Harris does all the instruments and arranging--and it's amazing how much the duo sounds like a seasoned, well-rounded live band. Cooley owes much to Denise LaSalle, and Harris has absorbed all kinds of R&B influences without losing his gritty focus.
"I Don't Want To Lose Your Love" slows down the proceedings to mid-tempo, but the tune has a scorching guitar (reminiscent of The Ventures and Link Wray, no less) and organ-style keyboard.
Stacked one upon the other, these bluesy but melodic vehicles achieve a cumulative impact. Cooley also reprises Be A Man from Cougar.
"I Want To Make Up," yet another fine ballad to add to the rapidly-growing Cooley catalogue, sounds more like a Cougar out-take in atmosphere and its emphasis on melody, but Harris adapts well to the change in pace with a fitting arrangement.
"I Want To Make Up" and "Be A Man" offer a welcome respite from the furious pace of the album as a whole before the album's finale, "Dirt Road Double Wide (Remix)," closes it out with a return to funky, ferocious fun.
Talking To You threw your Daddy B. Nice a curve and will likely dust other Cooley fans off their comfortable stance at home plate. The album defies expectations and renders the usual generalizations meaningless.
To wit, its ostensible Southern Soul cut, "Talking To You," is weaker than its 12-bar-blues tracks, and your Daddy in Soul is more than willing to say, "Bring it on." This is blues with tempo and melody and plenty of funk: in a word, Southern Soul the way we haven't heard it in awhile.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Talking To You CD, MP3's.
Comparison-Priced Talking To You CD, MP3's
Browse through all of Pat Cooley's CD's in Daddy B. Nice's CD Store.
Read Daddy B. Nice's Artist Guide to Pat Cooley.
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March 10, 2012:
O. B. BUCHANA: Let Me Knock The Dust Off (Ecko) Two Stars ** Dubious. Not much here.  There's a saying in the music business that if you're serious about maintaining a hold on the public and its record-buying attention, you must publish CD's with regularity. O. B. Buchana has adhered to this formula annually for the better part of a decade, and his stature in the Southern Soul community has grown accordingly, making him one of the dominant practitioners of the genre.
However, O.B.'s new CD, Let Me Knock The Dust Off (Ecko, 2012), coming on the heels of his fine That Thang Thang CD, is sabotaged by poor songwriting.
In contrast with prior Buchana albums composed by the usual Ecko Records regulars (John Ward, Raymond Moore, John Cummings, Morris Williams) with occasional input from greater-Memphis-area composers such as Sam Fallie, Charles Matthews and Gerod Rayburn, Let Me Knock The Dust Off features six of ten tunes written by Memphis-area musician and hot new recording act Sonny Mack (under his given name, William Norris).
The title track, O.B.'s featured selection (dedicated to women "without anybody in their lives"), contains one particularly witty and memorable line:
"I ain't had no loving
Since 2003."
The amusing cover art, with O.B. resting a feather duster on the posterior of a bent-over young lady, is a direct reference to this couplet and the song's title, "shake the dust off." However, if this fine young piece of eye candy hasn't had any loving in the last twenty-four hours, it sure looks like it.
Musically, the song's chorus, augmented by a fiery organ, generates some interest, but the song--arguably the best of the Norris-written selections--is hampered by its similarity to Buchana's own "That Thang Thang" from his last CD, not to mention the tune's overall debt to Tyrone Davis's "Banging On The Headboards."
The borrowing continues with the John Cummings/John Ward-written "Put Your Mouth In The South," which reworks the Big John Cummings-written "I'm Going Back Home" from O.B.'s Going Back Home CD.
"You don't have any
Southern Soul music
On your radio--"
--O.B. sings in the former song, explaining why he can't move up North, despite a lot of other perks.
Cummings' new, graphic lyrics inhabit a different geography, the human anatomy, and in Southern Soul's relentless search for new metaphors for lovemaking, "Put Your Mouth In The South" is surely one of the most bizarre.
If the bass line in "Juke Joint Queen" sounds familiar, it's because songwriter Raymond Moore cannibalizes the melody, bass and tempo from Carl Sims' "It Ain't A Juke Joint Without The Blues," which just happens to be another John Cummings/John Ward-written tune from Sims' 2004 release, It's Just A Party.
In fact, in lieu of any interesting melodies, you can almost make a game out of figuring out who stole what from whom on this CD. There's more "borrowing" than you'll find on a desperate college student's term paper.
The guitar lick from "Tap It" (John Cummings) is still eluding your Daddy B. Nice, although it's most certainly from a Southern Soul song of the last five years. Ah! Just thought of it: it's the riff from Stevie J.'s "Gotta Find A Good Woman."
Not to be a scold--everyone borrows--but if you do, the cardinal rule is to make it better. If it's the same quality or worse than the song it's borrowed from, chances are nobody's ever going to want to hear it again.
That, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with this CD. O.B.'s fans have heard it all before, and new listeners will wonder what all the fuss about O. B. Buchana is about.
With the exception of Charles Matthews' "Mind Your Own Business," five William Norris compositions close out this collection: "Hurry," "Throwdown," "Bang That Thang," "Mr. Telephone Man" and "Moon Over Clarksdale," the latter a redo of "Moon Over Memphis" from Sonny Mack's Going For Gold CD, reviewed here in January 2012.
"Bang That Thang" may be the low point. With "Crazy Love Thang," "That Thang Thang" and "Groove Thang"--all largely generic, repetitive, and melody-poor--already in the Buchana catalog, Buchana flirts with losing the good will of his audience.
If O.B. can't find material any better than this, it may be time to put out a "greatest hits" collection--in the process hopefully rediscovering the musical and emotional depth that attracted his audience to him in the first place.
Until then, fans interested in sampling Buchana at his best should go to the CD's I Can't Stop Drinkin', I'm Gonna Sleep and Southern Soul Country Boy.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Let Me Knock The Dust Off CD
Read Daddy B. Nice's Artist Guide to O. B. Buchana.
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February 21, 2012:
Ghetto Cowboy: Check Your Mailbox (Desert Sounds) Three Stars *** Solid Southern Soul Debut by a New Male Vocalist.  A debut album begs one overriding question: "Who is he (or she)?" Ghetto Cowboy throws his fans (limited to Southern Soul insiders at this point) a bit of a curve with his first published CD, Check Your Mailbox.
Listeners expecting to hear rousing party anthems on the order of "Party Goin' On Up In Here" or "You Walked Out" or Ghetto Cowboy's collaboration with Bigg Robb & The Problem Solvas on "Pop A Pill" could be disappointed. Maybe Ghetto Cowboy wasn't who we thought he was.
Not only are these YouTube songs (and Cowboy's original "Rooster In The Hen House") absent from the debut. The songs Ghetto Cowboy chooses to define himself on his introductory disc are much more mellow, inhabiting a middle-ground of melody and modest expectations that may surprise fans who up to now have been attracted mainly by Ghetto Cowboy's hard-charging rhythms and brashness.
"Check Your Mailbox," the title track and first single now bubbling up on deejay playlists throughout the chitlin' circuit (See Daddy B. Nice's #2 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single for January 2012), has a nice musical feeling to it, but it's unclear whether it has the pizzazz of some of those early hits which brought Cowboy his first notoriety.
"A night of pleasure bound us together," relates Ghetto Cowboy.
"You said you were pregnant
When I saw you again.
But all I wanted
Was a one-night stand."
The background vocal--or more accurately, voice-over--by Levy Marie as the hard-pressed single mother is indispensable. In fact, the female background singing, shared by Ms. Marie and Misty Lundy working separately on various tracks, is superb throughout the collection.
On "Down Low," another slow jam that epitomizes the more reflective and mature persona Ghetto Cowboy is intent on projecting in his first full-length disc, the combination of Levy Marie's background and the mainstream-sounding chords struck by a classic, cabaret-style piano mark Cowboy as a singer/songwriter more than an over-the-top, crowd-pleasing party impresario.
"Staying In Love With You" lifts the melody and arrangement from Bobby Jones' popular title cut from his 2011 Southern Soul comeback album, You Ain't Got No Proof. Southern Soul zealots will be sure to recognize the burglary; it remains to be seen whether they'll hold that against Cowboy's otherwise attractive redoing.
The closest Ghetto Cowboy comes to the adrenaline rush of "Party Goin' On" on Check Your Mailbox are the drastically-muted, mid-tempo finesse of "Wiggle" (no relation to the Willie Clayton standard) and the promising, subtly-exciting "Tighten Up," which plays a catchy, percolating rhythm against an eighties-style, synth-disco background.
As unlikely as it would have appeared before listening to this CD a few times, the cut that best represents what Ghetto Cowboy seems to be after in this collection is the #1 track, "Sweeter Than Candy," a pure, mid-tempo melody in the traditional Southern Soul style with a marvelous background cameo by Misty Lundy.
"I Love You," "Back Seat Love Affair," "Kick Off Your Shoes" and "Staying In Love With You" are cut from the same melodic, easy-going cloth. Ghetto Cowboy's vocals retain the same, rough, smoker's-harsh quality heard on his early singles, but the crescendoes and vamping are nowhere evident.
This lowering of the energy level might be fatal if not for the more-than-adequate songwriting, a task shared by James Emerson (Cowboy), studio maven Eric "Smidi" Smith and producer Pete Peterson.
Enjoying Check Your Mailbox is a bit like being invited to the house of a guy you've always known as a wild party-type and instead chilling in the living room with a few people and some pleasant conversation. If you can forgive Ghetto Cowboy for omitting the songs we wanted to hear (and still can't attain in published form), you'll find him surprisingly good company: a down-to-earth singer/songwriter with a real pipeline to the sweet mid-section of the Southern Soul canon.
Sample or Buy Ghetto Cowboy's "Check Your Mailbox" CD.
Read Daddy B. Nice's new Artist Guide to Ghetto Cowboy.
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January 28, 2012:
Sonny Mack: Going For Gold (Ecko) Three Stars *** Solid Southern Soul Debut by a New Male Vocalist.  Sonny Mack gives a succinct description of his life and musical style in his song "Guitar Licker" from Mack's new solo debut CD, Going For Gold.
"When I was a young boy
In old Chi-Town,
Watching all the pretty girls
Walking around.
One day a woman
Pulled me to the side
And she showed me
How to lick it."
And, after the "guitar licker" chorus. . .
"I moved to Memphis
About twenty years back.
Started playing the blues,
Now how about that?
I do what I do
Pretty good, I'm told.
I've been licking that thing
Since I was twelve years old."
Sonny Mack's "licking" style is in the bluesman mold of Albert King, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray, and even as Mack ventures into Southern Soul territory in tunes like "It's Saturday Night"--with traces of Theodis Ealey here and O. B. Buchana there--he remains anchored in the blues.
Sonny Mack is not a natural singer. He is a guitarist and songwriter/arranger first and foremost, and like some other emerging artists of the moment--Bobby Conerly and Jim Bennett--he has to "work" at his vocals just to carry them off. "Going For Gold," the title track, has the lyricism of B. B. King or Little Milton, but Mack is by no means a vocalist of their level of talent.
The Southern Soul singer Mack most resembles is Chuck Roberson, a journeyman performer (also from the Ecko label, only a decade earlier) whom you would never put in the same breath with a Johnnie Taylor or Tyrone Davis, but who was always best when hewing to a blues context.
Roberson is a sweeter, more sophisticated singer than Sonny Mack, but your Daddy B. Nice would be hard-pressed to think of a Roberson album that had as much quality and quantity as this one.
Going For Gold is a generous 14-track collection, with nary a throw-away, gimmick or remix. All the music was written by Mack (under the name William Norris). Among the notable tunes:
"Guitar Licker" is Sonny Mack's equivalent of Little Milton's "Guitar Man."
"Going For Gold" is the album's centerpiece, with the set's finest melody and arrangement. The song is really an ode to the Southern Soul scene emanating from Jackson, Mississippi.
"It's Saturday Night" is Sonny Mack's version of Sir Charles Jones' "Friday," a working-man's anthem to letting go. Here the over-achieving "want-to" in Mack's vocal is particularly successful, raising the song to a higher level.
"I Forgot To Say I Love You" is a mid-tempo, Ealey-like song with background vocals by Morris J. Williams and Sheilena Banks. The background, if only the variety of hearing the notes an octave higher, adds immeasurably to the arrangement and might have done much to distinguish other songs on the set, which suffer from a certain sameness and lack of color.
"I Only Get Laid When I Get Paid" is a Buchana-like ode to the well-documented (in Southern Soul, at least) connection between money and sexual attraction.
"You Do That To Me" boasts a refreshingly different guitar sound, but the melody never quite resolves itself.
"I'm A Blues Man" is standard bar blues, but it's what Mack does best, and it shows. This tune does have a rare female background.
"La La La" shows Sonny Mack at his creative best, marshalling a good song with fresh chord changes and a better-than-average vocal.
"Midnight Man," with its peppy keyboard and all-business beat, almost sounds like a Lee "Shot" Williams song. Mack's vocal is convincing.
The only clunkers are the overly derivative "Let Me Change My Mind," "Playing Catch Up," "Bang That Thang" and "Moon Over Memphis," which sounds at times like a religious hymn and at other times like a country-western ballad. Despite "Moon Over Memphis's" doubled vocal track, it and the other three tracks expose the ordinariness of Mack's voice.
Going For Gold introduces a mature guitarist/singer/writer who has obviously been accruing valuable material for quite some time.
If you're looking for the next Sir Charles Jones, or a young enfant terrible with the vocal technique and "wow" factor of LaMorris Williams, you've come to the wrong CD.
But if you're looking for genuine, modest, blues-based Southern Soul, and at least one standard torch-bearer for the genre in "Going For Gold" (the song), you could do much worse than to check out Sonny Mack.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Sonny Mack Going For Gold CD
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January 7, 2012:
AL LINDSEY: Can You Handle This? (Pulsating Music) Two Stars ** Dubious. Not much here.  In the fabulous sixties Michigan was the heart and soul of the R&B universe. The Detroit sound ruled not just the rhythm & blues charts but the pop charts. Smokey Robinson, The Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Jerry Butler and The Temptations rubbed shoulders with The Beatles and The Beach Boys and sold millions of records.
Motown brought grit to the Top Forty, but that was then. This is now. So many urban R&B styles--including jazz, smooth jazz, disco, funk, rap and hiphop--have swept over the North in tsunami-like waves since then, inundating the culture in inferior, ever-more-diluted styles, that musicians in the Northeast grow up in a veritable Tower of Babel.
It's not like that in the Deep South. Because of the region's cultural isolation, the music--and the taste of its audience--has remained surprisingly pure. On the radio, people can pick up an entirely different sound while driving through the countryside. Traditional R&B survives. It's not quite the same, and it's admittedly not as well produced as the 60's and early 70's, but it's got the same grit and depth, and in some ways is even more authentic than back in the day.
Al Lindsey is one of a group of Michigan musicians, including Simeo (the hiphop-styled producer and solo artist) and Maurice Davis (the singer/guitarist and self-styled "King of Party Blues"), who have a love jones for Southern Soul. Give them credit, at least, for that much.
Encouraged by other well-meaning but misguided pundits and artists, they routinely show up on the Southern Soul radio playlists and occasionally create some media buzz. Though Simeo is under-rated as a vocalist, Al Lindsey is arguably the finest singer of the trio, a wispy, sensitive-voiced purveyor of sultry, urban-styled ballads. Lindsey's new CD, Can You Handle This?, follows in the footsteps of its two immediate predecessors, Caught(2005) and So In Love (2007), which the artist himself has aptly described as music "easy on the ear."
And therein lies the problem. Southern Soul music has been called a lot of things, but it's never been described as easy listening. In the three albums listed above--all recommended for the smooth jazz, urban R&B fan--Al Lindsey has recorded only one song that could indisputably be called a Southern Soul tune: "Hollow Point" from the 2005 album Caught. The rest of his catalog has been borderline Southern Soul at its best.
What is the comparison? Your Daddy B. Nice's vision of a northern version of a Southern Soul song would be (but not restricted to) Dennis Edward's "Don't Look Any Further," TLC's "Creep" or "Montel Jordan's "This Is How We Do It." Love ballads might be something like SWV's "Right Here (Human Nature)" or Milestone's "I Care About You."
Consequently, Lindsey ballads like "A Simple Love Song," "Nothing Greater Than Love" and "Let It Go" from the Can You Handle This? album sound almost embarrassingly smarmy.
The peppy but anorexic "Keep On Getting It On" and the tinny-sounding, disjointed title tune "Can You Handle This?" hold little interest. "Keep On Getting It On" teases with its likeable, upbeat tempo. It even references Betty Wright's "Tonight Is The Night"--
"Tonight is the night
You make me a man."
--and its "two steps to the left, two steps to the right" refrain cajoles you into believing you're listening to Southern Soul (but you're not). "Diamonds And Pearls" is one of the better cuts from the album, but it will only get the Southern Soul fan to first base, i.e. Isley Brothers' territory.
Simeo Overall (who has never produced an authentic-sounding Southern Soul song) produced the album and wrote the music for some of the tracks, including the slow jams "Let It Go," "A Simple Love Song" and "Nothing Greater Than Love."
Lindsey himself wrote most of the music and the lion's share of the lyrics, so it's hard to believe these two seasoned and successful Saginaw natives, Al Lindsey and Simeo, weren't aware they were trying to serve two mutually-contradictory markets, the silk-sheets smooth of urban R&B (and current Michigan) and the gunny-sack rough of the Southern Soul South.
And the silk sheets won out.
The cover "Leaving Me"--not to be confused with silk sheets--a great song by an obscure vintage band called the Independents (and written by J. Giles and M. Barge), has the fullest, most Southern Soul "feel" to it and will probably please Southern Soul enthusiasts more than any other track on the CD. Lindsey could do worse than put it out as a radio single.
Is Can You Handle This? competent? Yes. Pleasant? To some extent.
But it would be a disservice and mis-labeling to recommend it to fans hungry to hear eat-with-your-hands Southern Soul. This is by comparison little-finger-slightly-raised, tea-sipping music. And if it's considered Southern Soul, how do you explain to a stranger what Southern Soul really is, and why Southern Soul is blowing the roof off the rest of today's R&B?
--Daddy B. Nice
Sample or Buy Al Lindsey's Can You Handle This CD/MP3's.
Browse through Al Lindsey's albums and MP3's in Daddy B. Nice's Bargain-Priced CD Store.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Queen Emily, Queen Emily Sings 4/28/12
Pat Cooley, Talking To You, 4/2/12
O. B. Buchana, Let Me Knock The Dust Off, 3/10/12
Ghetto Cowboy, Check Your Mailbox, 2/21/12
Sonny Mack, Going For Gold, 1/28/12
Al Lindsey, Can You Handle This? 1/7/12
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Send CD's to Daddy B. Nice, P. O. Box 19574, Boulder, Colorado, 80308 to be eligible for review on this page.
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Recently reviewed:
Ms. Jody, Ms. Jody's In The House 12/10/11 (Scroll down this column.)
Big G, All About Me 11/12/11 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Omar Cunningham, Growing Pains, 10/30/11 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Luther Lackey, Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man, 10/9/11 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Jim Bennett, Taking It To The Next Level, 10/1/11 (Scroll down this column.)
Frank Lucas, American Bluester, 9/18/11 (Scroll down this column.)
Sheba Potts-Wright, Let Your Mind Go Back, 9/4/11 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Larry Shannon Hargrove, Crown Prince Of Southern Soul, 8/13/11 (Contained in "Tidbits" section of Artist Guide. Click link.)
Uvee Hayes, True Confessions, 7/29/11 (Scroll down this column.)
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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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December 10, 2011:
MS. JODY: Ms. Jody's In The House (Ecko) Five Stars ***** Can't Miss. Pure Southern Soul Heaven.
Can Ms. Jody, who's being touted as the new Queen of Southern Soul, have been with us only a half-dozen years? It's hard to believe, but true. The sweet-singing, hard-working performer has released six full-length CD's in that time span.
The first, You're My Angel, went largely unnoticed (as per most debuts), introducing Ms. Jody's first noteworthy single, the country-influenced "I Never Take A Day Off (From Loving My Baby)."
The debut also lay down the formula for one of Ms. Jody's most durable draws: simplistic but memorable and often self-referential dance jams, in this case the tune "Ms. Jody," which foreshadowed such subsequent hit singles as "Ms. Jody's Thing" and "Ms. Jody's Keeping It Real."
The second CD, What You Gonna Do When The Rent Is Due, featured the hit single, "Your Dog's About To Kill My Cat," a uniquely-arranged ballad loosely based on Billy "Soul" Bonds' "Scat Cat, Kitty Kitty" and other "dog" (man) vs. "cat (woman) songs popular in 21st Century Southern Soul music. The album also featured another popular single in "Big Daddy Don't You Come."
The third disc, I Never Take A Day Off, reprised Ms. Jody's 2006 single (the title tune) for a much larger audience the diva hadn't yet gained on her earlier release. The album also contained a number of memorable singles including "Energizer Bunny," "It's The Weekend," "Lonely Housewife" and "Ms. Jody's Thing."
A slight drop-off in quality marred three subsequent albums, It's A Ms. Jody Thang and Ms. Jody's In The Streets Again and Ms. Jody's Keeping It Real.
Your Daddy B. Nice was particularly critical of the latter, released earlier this year, questioning whether Ms. Jody was beginning to repeat herself and whether her musical formulas were growing stale.
There were no such qualms on the part of most critics, however, and led by "The Bop" (from Ms. Jody's In The Streets Again), one of those simple but hooky dance jams at which Ms. Jody has always excelled, the Mississippi diva's reputation took its greatest strides.
Many of the accolades could be attributed to Ms. Jody's sheer determination--her visibility on the concert scene and the frequency of her output--which trumped occasional lapses in quality.
In the same time period, the two greatest female Southern Soul singers of the day--namely, Shirley Brown and Denise LaSalle--were putting out their own masterpieces, but at a much less furious pace, and Ms. Jody's main competition in the younger ranks--the immensely talented Nellie "Tiger" Travis--had fallen off.
Now, as if to satisfy both diehard fans and critics, Ms. Jody has released a second CD in one year, Ms. Jody's In The House, just in time for wrapping and placement under the Christmas tree. And the new sounds in the CD are bound to please everyone. Ms. Jody's In The House is as chock full of gold-plated material as any of her early triumvirate of CD's. In fact, it may be Ms. Jody's finest LP to date.
The album is anchored by Ms. Jody's most substantial song since "I Never Take A Day Off" and "Your Dog Is Killing My Cat." The song is "When Your Give A Damn Just Don't Give A Damn Any More," which is loosely based--or in the tradition of--Latimore's "My Give A Damn Gave Out (A Long Time Ago)."
This tune succeeds on so many levels it could almost walk on water, and in recognizing it your Daddy B. Nice wrote:
Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "BREAKING" Southern Soul Singles Review For. . .
NOVEMBER 2011
1. "When Your Give A Damn Just Don't Give A Damn Any More"---------Ms. Jody
Ms. Jody's finest chorus since "I Never Take A Day Off." The tune begins with the bass line and chords from "Groovin,'" but Ms. Jody soon floats away on her own sun-kissed cloud of inspiration. John Ward's carefully modulated arrangement is key. Before you realize it, you're asking yourself, "Did I just listen to Ms. Jody sing and testify for six-plus minutes?"
The album furnishes two renditions of "When Your Give A Damn Just Don't Give A Damn Any More," a "radio version" and the extended take critiqued above, and such is the pull of the song I still haven't bothered to listen to the shorter radio track. Ms. Jody has "voiced-over" (or talked) on many songs from her catalog, most recently in "Ms. Jody's Keeping It Real." But she has never delved into a subject (getting out of a bad relationship) with such convincing emotional authority.
And yet, even that doesn't address the 100 per cent-proof credibility she musters on "When Your Give A Damn Just Don't Give A Damn Any More." After all, there are countless examples of authority and credibility that one wouldn't want to listen to over and over again.
Ms. Jody's voice-over on "When Your Give A Damn Just Don't Give A Damn Any More" transcends its message. It works not only as content but as style, the words doing their Ella Fitzgerald thing while meshing musically to perfection with that bass hook and that deeply satisfying organ-style keyboard. The result: pure soul--Southern Soul--to be precise.
The measuring stick of just how good this CD is the song "Southern Soul Dip," a throwback to "The Bop" and "Ms. Jody's Thang."
Whatever you thought of "The Bop," which captivated many fans but also had some scratching their heads, wondering what all the fuss was about, the fact was it was fairly light fare. If this were just another Ms. Jody album in the generic sense (the pattern over the last couple of CD's), the "Southern Soul Dip" would have been the anchor song, and it would have been surrounded by lesser, even "lighter" tunes. And yet "Southern Soul Dip," this album's version of "The Bop," not only isn't the best (i.e. anchor) song on the CD. It's not even among the top three or four tracks. And it's still pretty damned good.
Here are the heavyweight tracks:
"Something I Want": This is the duet with David Brinston that has charted on Southern Soul stations all summer. Despite a mediocre melody, the tune has a killer hook that the arrangement pounds home with the finality of a mountain man splitting firewood with a sledge and wedge.
"Let Me Be The Shoulder": This song was the centerpiece of a little-noticed album by singer Brenda Williams, the wife of Morris J. Williams (long associated with Ecko Records in Memphis). It's an indication of how thoroughly Ms. Jody cast her net for "primo" material. The ballad sounds like a Southern Soul standard.
"You Lost A Fortune": Another inspired choice of a retread tune, this one originally done by Lorraine Turner, and (like the Brenda Williams ballad) also a song that sounds like a classic via Ms. Jody's version.
"I Never Knew Good Love Could Hurt So Bad": Here's a completely unexpected, blues-oriented, future classic. It's got a little B. B. King. It's got more than a little R. Kelly in his best southern soul & blues mode, i.e. "You Made Me Love You." The song is terrific.
"I Did It": This track also made it onto Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "Breaking" Southern Soul Singles" as follows:
Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "BREAKING" Southern Soul Singles Review For. . .
DECEMBER 2011
2. "I Did It"---------Ms. Jody
I've always been a sucker for nursery rhymes (not to mention military chants) in popular songs--they always seem to be so much fun--and this material is perfect for Ms. Jody. "I Did It" also has a nifty rhythm section reminiscent of Johnny Otis's Bo-Diddley-inspired "Hand Jive."
On a slightly lower tier of success, the collection offers "Ms. Jody's Thang (Zydeco Remix)," which is very catchy (and a former DBN "breaking" single), "Southern Soul Dip" (this CD's "The Bop"), "Come A Little Closer," "I Just Wanna Love You" and "Just A Little Bit Won't Get It."
With arrangements by John Ward & company that are especially attuned to the seasoned Southern Soul ear, and with songwriting from Ward, Raymond Moore, Joanne Delapaz (Ms. Jody), Brenda & Morris Williams, Sam Fallie, Gerod Rayburn and Susan Shelby, every one of the bunch hitting on all cylinders, this album makes all the right decisions and reaps the benefits.
Even the filler on this musically-rich CD has the magic touch. "Ms. Jody's In The House," a one-minute, twenty-two second appetizer (on which Ms. Jody doesn't even sing) featuring a "house" rhythm track and some uncredited male singers chanting "Ms. Jody," accompanied by cheers, hand-claps and a persistent "wolf" whistler, works to perfection.
Southern Soul Heaven.
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Ms. Jody's In The House CD
Comparison-Priced Ms. Jody's In The House CD
Read Daddy B. Nice's Artist Guide to Ms. Jody.
Ms. Jody on I-Tunes
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October 9, 2011:
JIM BENNETT: Taking It To The Next Level (Aviara) Four Stars **** Distinguished Effort. Should please old fans and gain new.
Like the late, great, underground Southern Soul singer Frank Mendenhall, Jim Bennett hails from the D.C. area, and like Mendenhall his music is idiosyncratic, rhythm-obsessed and self-contained in a supremely self-confident way.
Bennett's songs may not impress you on first listen. Certainly, lyrically they won't--it's just "feel good and party." Bennett's band is a tightly woven unit honed over many years of bar-band venues, and his "feel good" creativity is poured entirely into the textures of the rhythm section (and rhythm guitar) of each song. The lead guitar (Bennett) seldom wanders far from a rhythm guitar mode, leaving most fills to the keyboards.
The songs work a very narrow slice of R&B style, both in musical and conceptual range, but what they do, they do to near-perfection. Bennett's voice is not spectacular. His slightly-nasal tone is as rough as crumbling asphalt, but his self-assurance and authenticity are beyond reproach.
So while Bennett's songs may not be spectacular the first couple of times you listen to them, they gradually and diligently grow on you, the best of them pulling you into their mesmerizing rhythmic textures, culminating in an almost insatiable drawing power.
Jim Bennett has a passel of self-published albums to his credit, many featuring his longtime vocal collaborator, Lady Mary, and all featuring his trusty and self-assured live band. (See all of Jim Bennett's albums in Daddy B. Nice's CD Store.) He's gone through many phases--a guitarist phase, a gospel phase (ongoing), and a singer phase, to name just a few--and all of these dues duly paid are buried within the content and artistry of Bennett's newest album, Taking It To The Next Level.
And while the older CD's betray Bennett's influences--Barry White, Otis Redding, Gerald Levert--in frequently very direct and traceable ways, Taking It To The Next Level really accomplishes what the title promises, building upon the signature style that first became readily apparent in Bennett's previous collection, "Slap It...Tap It."
Bennett has locked into a signature style of tightly controlled hooks delivered with live instruments in a deliberately slow, grown-folks tempo. The result is a sound that hasn't been heard on the contemporary chitlin' circuit.
Your Daddy B. Nice officially hopped on the admittedly compact-sized Jim Bennett bandwagon this past summer after hearing "The Body Roll" (one of the highlights of the new CD) and falling in love with it as follows:
Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "BREAKING" Southern Soul Singles Review For. . .
JUNE 2011
1. "The Body Roll" -------------Jim Bennett
A mainstay of the DC area (along with the more well-known Hardway Connection), Jim Bennett knows where he's going and how to get there. I've seldom heard a Southern Soul band sound so tight. Bennett's ready to blossom into a star, and every time I hear this song, I turn up the volume.
Sample or buy "The Body Roll" MP3 on Bargain-Priced Shots of Southern Soul, Vol. 3 CD.
Around the same time, I gained an invaluable insight into the band's workings by stumbling across a video of the unit in action.
Watch Jim Bennett, Lady Mary and the band singing "Slap It Tap It" on YouTube.
"Action" may seem too strong a word for the serpentine movements of the upfront players, Bennett, Lady Mary, and Darlene Holbrook. No prancing and pacing onstage ala T. K. Soul or the late Reggie P. The Bennett band's "body rolls" are as subtle and tightly controlled as the unit's rhythm section.
Now, perhaps to celebrate that Number 1 appearance on Daddy B. Nice's Top Ten "Breaking" Singles, there's a new video of "The Body Roll" on YouTube. Bennett negotiates one of his best vocals ever, husky and emotive, and when he slyly smiles under that Groucho Marx mustache, you can feel the intense satisfaction he's getting from finally and indisputably hitting that musical sweet spot.
"It's You I Need," another track from the new CD, is also on YouTube.
Meanwhile, the opening track of the new album, "I'm Ready To Party," is my pick for a promising single. The band's subtle guitar licks and always soulful keyboards captivate in much the same way as "The Body Roll."
Other noteworthy tracks on Taking It To The Next Level" include "Keep On Backing It Up" (with a little piano and strings), a reprise of "Slap It...Tap It," "She Wanna Come Back" and "Look What Love Has Done" (about as close as Bennett comes to doing ballads), "TGIF" (a redo of formerly-recorded Bennett track) and (for the beach music crowd) "A Carolina Beach."
"I heard that Mel Waiters
Is going to be in the house--"
Jim Bennett sings towards the end of "I'm Ready To Party."
"And Roy C, too.
Jonothan Burton gonna get down
And Clarence Carter
Gonna stroke it for you."
Jim Bennett is stroking it as well as any of them, and even if you can't stay "up until a quarter to four" any more, you can dream about it vividly while enjoying this highly-recommended effort.
--Daddy B. Nice
Sample or Buy Bargain-Priced Taking It To The Next Level CD.
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September 18, 2011:
FRANK LUCAS: American Bluester (Alvert/Bridgeport) Two Stars ** Dubious. Not much here.
I was hoping to see Frank Lucas, one of the most eccentric characters in rhythm and blues, mine a diamond similar to "The Man With The Singing Ding-A-Ling" on his new CD, American Bluester.
A true original, as sleazy and street-wise as they come, Frank Lucas makes the rowdiest stars of the chitlin' circuit--O. B. Buchana, Ms. Jody and the like--look and sound like gentle-folk in a nineteenth-century drawing room.
To get the full flavor of just how raunchy this guys looks and sings, check out the video of "The Man With The Singing Ding-A-Ling," in which the "good-thing" man sings over a background track borrowed from Betty Wright's "Tonight Is The Night." Wright, by the way, had previously shoplifted the background from the Rascals' summer-in-the-park mega-hit, "Groovin'."
Perhaps women can relate better to Betty Wright's story of a girl's first sexual experience, but I doubt whether there's a man alive (and quite a few women) who wouldn't rather listen to Frank Lucas singing about his "ding-a-ling" with the hormonal obliviousness of a rooster crowing at dawn.
It's funny, it's "dirty" (the CD containing it is titled Dirty Old Man), and it boasts a hook that lends itself to singing along with the abandon of drunken tail-gaters reveling in an autumn-weekend victory.
In awarding "The Man With The Singing Ding-A-Ling" no less than the #6 Southern Soul Single of the entire year of 2009 (and the "Best Outa-Left-Field" song of that year), your Daddy B. Nice wrote:
The song alternates between the romantic (we're talking "romantic" from a masculine perspective here, ladies) and the hilarious. Romantic when it best approximates the feverish buzz of a man primed to do the deed. Hilarious when it goes so far over the top you can hear even the women bursting into laughter.
The people in the "business" who are turning up their noses at the silliness and/or the "X-rated-ness" of the lyrics are the same people who were turning up their noses when Marvin Sease's "Candy Licker" and "Hoochie Momma" first came out--and they refused to play him, too.
(See Frank Lucas in Daddy B. Nice's Comprehensive Index.)
Unfortunately, the new CD's candidate for a follow-up single, "Don't Put Out The Fire," falls far short of the heady revelry of its predecessor, or even "Ding-A-Ling's predecessor, "The Good Thing Man," first recorded by Lucas many years earlier.
All the elements are present--the idiosyncratic singing style, the shamelessness, the pep and pizzazz--but the material is B-side quality, and try as he will Lucas can't squeeze this lump of coal into a diamond that sparkles with the same intensity as either "The Man With The Singing Ding-A-Ling" or "The Good Thing Man."
Listen to Frank Lucas singing "The Good Thing Man" on YouTube.
One wants to encourage an artist so willing to go where even the established "wild men" of the chitlin' circuit--Bobby Rush, Chick Willis, Dr. Feelgood Potts, O. B. Buchana, Joe Poonanny--seldom go any more, but in the end Lucas's daredevil style here comes off too thin and amateurish-sounding.
The two most interesting cuts on American Bluester are, not surprisingly, also the most radical. Lucas is most fascinating when he's approaching material with a devil-may-care, audience-be-damned, peers-be-ignored style.
Thus, the near-rap "I Wanna Get Personal" has some integrity and bite. Likewise, the off-the-chain, blushingly-romantic "I Left My Heart In Lousiana," sung in Frank's whiney but street-real vocal tone, bears repeated listening.
See Frank Lucas's "I Left My Heart in Lousiana: Daddy B. Nice's #6 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single, September 2011.
Another tune, "Mary Had A Baby," has an intriguing and vaguely folkish arrangement. It tells a Lucas-like tale of outlaw parentage--and a baby that looks like him.
"She's my best friend's old lady,"
--Lucas sings with sly humor and typical amorality of the mother--
"Now how could that be?"
But like most of the songs on American Bluester, the track doesn't generate enough musical momentum to seal the deal.
Frank Lucas is an acquired taste. He's definitely what Pam Grier, in Steven Seagal's first action movie "Above The Law," calls "the element."
"Oh no, Nico" (Seagall's character). I don't want to go in there," Grier (playing Seagall's sidekick) says as they peruse an upscale, inner-city nightclub across the street.
"What's the matter?" Seagall asks.
"It's the ELEMENT, Nico," Grier says.
Frank Lucas is the Southern Soul "element," embodying all the danger, gaucheness and outright weirdness that even the wild hinterlands of Southern Soul had tamed in most of its headline performers.
In American Bluester, it may be the lack of the ELEMENT that ultimately does Frank Lucas in. He's a bit too tame, both musically and lyrically. This time he doesn't finish with the material at hand, and as a result he doesn't win.
--Daddy B. Nice
Sample or Buy American Bluester CD or MP3's.
Sample or Buy Dirty Old Man CD or MP3's of "The Man With The Singing Ding-A-Ling" and "The Good Time Man."
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July 29, 2011:
UVEE HAYES: True Confessions (Mission Park) Two Stars ** Dubious. Not much here.
Uvee Hayes deserves enormous respect for her diligent work in rhythm and blues for over a generation. Although her vocal talent is a little thinner and more brittle than the first rank of soul divas, Hayes' precision in pitch and tone has always been unerring.
Her singing signature is a long, ascending run which creeps higher and higher, ending in an impossibly-high, falsetto peak, pinched but pitch-perfect.
Uvee Hayes had what amounted to a Southern Soul novelty single two years ago with her version of the minor Johnnie Taylor standard, "Play Something Pretty." The single and CD "Play Something Pretty, with vocals shared by Chicago soul star Otis Clay, came out in 2009 (CDS) and introduced--in some case re-introduced--Ms. Hayes to a new audience.
Hayes also teamed up with fellow St. Louis performer Barbara Carr that year for Southern Soul Blues Sisters (Aviara).
Talk about "old school." Uvee Hayes makes "old school" sound "new school." Some of the songs--roughly half of the songs, actually--on Hayes' new album, TRUE CONFESSIONS, go back as far as 50's stars like Dinah Washington and Lena Horne.
Uvee's music wouldn't be out of place on one of those variety shows of yesteryear--The "Ed Sullivan Show," long before The Beatles--on a black and white screen on a box TV with vacuum tubes.
Not only are the songs "dated," many are recycled. Uvee Hayes has been recording "In My Eyes" on almost every CD she's published since its original appearance in 1984.
"Steal Away To The Hideaway" dates back to Uvee's SWEET AND GENTLE CD (1998), and Uvee initially covered Betty Everett's "There'll Come A Time" in her 2001 THERE'LL COME A TIME CD. "He's My Man" (done twice on this CD) also appeared on the THERE'LL COME A TIME CD. Thus it's safe to say that even Uvee Hayes fans will find little new to entice them here.
The gem of the set, once again, is a duet with the seasoned and vibrant Otis Clay. Just as Barbara Carr has gained a valuable collaborator in Roy Roberts recently, Uvee Hayes has found a once-in-a-lifetime singing partner in Otis Clay. "Steal Away To The Hideaway" is the one sterling Southern Soul tune on this disc, a genuine keeper.
Thanks to the one-two punch of the first two tracks--the fresh duet with Clay on "Steal Away" followed by the bracing redo of "There'll Come A Time"--I must admit I was smitten with this album the first time I heard it. The sound was different, the material sounded fresh. But I quickly grew tired of the "yesterday" style.
Uvee actually covers one of Dinah Washington's more tepid originals, "Don't Come Running Back To Me," complete with a retro-jazz arrangement straight out of the post-WWII era, and she maintains a similar, straight-faced, cabaret-style soul on at least three other tracks.
Don't know if anyone under the age of sixty-five is interested in such music any more--although, come to think of it, it may be an age group that still purchases CD's.
When Uvee segues into the next tune, "Someone To Believe In," the sense of being in a time warp--or a Manhattan supper-club catering to seniors, or maybe just a mall elevator--intensifies.
"It's Just A Man's Way" continues the pinch-yourself, am-I-really-hearing-this-on-a-Southern-Soul-album quandary.
"He don't bother to take me out any more," Uvee croons.
"Not even to the grocery store. . .
. . . Or is it just a man's way?'
Even the lyrics are embedded in the morals and sentiments of a bygone time.
The remaining songs break down into a gospel tune, "No Faith No Love," a creditable Southern Soul tune (the only other one on the CD) called "Caught," and a borderline Southern Soul/R&B tune called "He's My Man" done in two versions, one with Stevie Wonder on harmonica.
But even on these three cuts, one can't help but think this is music for the kind of gentrified folk who as a rule disdain the uncouthness of Southern Soul.
Don't miss the MP3 of "Steal Away To The Hideaway" with Otis Clay, though. With Clay Ms. Hayes has found her perfect foil. The authority in his vocals gives Uvee the "entree" into the Southern Soul world to do her thing. His depth provides the perfect backdrop for her butterfly-like brilliance.
--Daddy B. Nice
Sample or Buy Bargain-Priced Uvee Hayes TRUE CONFESSIONS CD, MP3'S
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