The Love Doctor (The Impact Of "Slow Roll It")
Daddy B. Nice's #26 ranked Southern Soul Artist
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The Love Doctor (The Impact Of "Slow Roll It")Daddy B. Nice's #26 ranked Southern Soul Artist |
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"Slow Roll It" The Love Doctor (The Impact Of "Slow Roll It") Composed by Charles Jones February 1, 2020:
THE LOVE DOCTOR "RETIRES"! See Daddy B. Nice's Concert Calendar.
8 pm, Saturday, November 28, 2015. Stress Relievers Bar & Lounge, 423 Van Arsdale Road, Pickens, Mississippi. Retirement Celebration for The Love Doctor. The Love Doctor, Terry Wright, Sorrento Ussery, Pat Brown, Nathaniel Kimble, Doctor Dee, Lady Di and more. 601-941-3582. ************ "In retrospect, the Love Doctor's career was like a brilliant comet streaking across the night-time sky. Even if it was restricted to the two masterpieces "Slow Roll It" and "Lies," the Love Doctor's contribution to contemporary Southern Soul would be unassailable." --Daddy B. Nice, 2010 Listen to The Love Doctor singing "Slow Roll It" on YouTube. Listen to The Love Doctor featuring Thomisene Anderson singing "Lies (You Said It, No I Didn't)" on YouTube. 
*********** Note: The Love Doctor also appears on Daddy B. Nice's original Top 100 Southern Soul Artists (90's-00's). The "21st Century" after The Love Doctor's name in the headline is to distinguish his artist-guide entries on this page from his artist-guide page on Daddy B. Nice's original chart. *********** October 1, 2012: Daddy B. Nice's Updated Profile:The Love Doctor. It's still one of the most arresting and appealing artist names in all of Southern Soul, and as we approach the top twenty-five artists and songs in the Southern Soul 21st Century Countdown it's only appropriate to remember the song and the artist which in many ways started it all (the year was 2001): The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll It."Listen to The Love Doctor singing "Slow Roll It" on YouTube while you read. Of course, The Love Doctor and Sir Charles Jones (who wrote, sang and produced "Slow Roll It") didn't "start it all." Southern Soul had been churning along under all the mainstream musical genres with standard-bearers no less than Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Little Milton, Marvin Sease and J. Blackfoot. For any other sub-genre of urban R&B, the passing away of such giants would have spelled the death knell, but Southern Soul not only survived but flourished, and much of it had to do with The Love Doctor, teamed with a young writer/producer/would-be performer named Charles Jones, and a grizzled producer/impresario/deejay named Senator Jones/Uncle Bobo, who collectively (if not always cooperatively) as a trinity proved that Southern Soul could thrive in new hands, in a new direction, and still hit the deepest, most soulful spots in the hearts of lovers of soul music. There were people who didn't get it, like the All Music Guide critic who called "every single thing about it (Doctor Of Love) laughable and outmoded," just as today there are are people who can't accept the raw, rustic and embarrassingly straightforward vocal style and lyrics of L.J. Echols. The triumphs of those years, much of it recorded in these pages, led to disappointments and a fallow future (also regretfully noted here), especially for The Love Doctor. The Love Doctor was pegged the 11th-ranked artist in the original posting of Daddy B. Nice's Top 100 Southern Soul Artists in 2004--the first time, in fact, any of these artists had been grouped together--a chart position from which he slipped only a little (to #14) in the ensuing years. But although his subsequent work wasn't all bad, The Love Doctor never again achieved the heights of "Slow Roll It" and "Lies" (with Thomisene Anderson). Listen to The Love Doctor and Thomisene Anderson dueting on "Lies (You Said It, No I Didn't)" on YouTube while you read. While the Charles Jones-written "Slow Roll It" was by far the more commercial tune, "Lies"--written and previously recorded by renowned songwriter and Peggy Scott-Adams producer Jimmy Lewis--carried more heft for aficionados of Southern Soul. Thomisene: "You said you graduated-- Said you graduated From Penn State." Love Doctor: "There you go again. I told you I got my diploma When I was in State Pen." Or. . . Thomisene: "Said you were born in LA, But you were born in the South." Love Doctor: "Where else would I be, baby, With all this gold in my mouth?" In the Love Doctor's hickory-hard vocal stylings the song's simultaneously poignant and witty lyrics (especially for those conversant with the blue-collar African-American culture of the South) jumped off the CD player, and with Thomisene Anderson's partnering vocal, exquisitely feminine by contrast, the song achieved the rare resonance of Southern Soul classics on the order of Ronnie Lovejoy's "Sho' Wasn't Me" and Johnnie Taylor's "Soul Heaven." Read about "Slow Roll It" and "Lies" in Daddy B. Nice's Original Artist Guide to The Love Doctor. The Love Doctor still performs from time to time, and he is still deemed a headliner in the Delta, where his name rings a little louder and carries a little further. --Daddy B. Nice About The Love Doctor (The Impact Of "Slow Roll It") The Love Doctor was born Lewis Clark and raised in the Memphis area before moving to Illinois and becoming a disc jockey. Under the deejay name "Blues Doctor," he gained a sizable audience and eventually transformed himself into a performer.
Song's Transcendent Moment "I met a girl,
Tidbits 1.
Honorary "B" Side "Lies (You Said It, No I Didn't)" |
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It's hard to overstate the importance of The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll it" to the evolution of 21st-century southern soul music. The tune didn't possess the musical or technical sophistication of the time period's masters--Johnny Taylor, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Little Milton and the like--all recording at Jackson, Mississippi's Malaco Records, but "Slow Roll It" had an indefinable newness, simplicity and relevance. The song marked the convergence of three of the fledgling genre's 21st-century pioneers: charismatic-voiced Lewis Clark (aka The Love Doctor), his gospel-music peer from his younger days, producer Senator Jones (aka Jackson, Mississippi, graveyard-shift, WMPR deejay Uncle Bobo), and a young genius and star-to-be, composer and neophyte producer 
It's Charles' background-singing voice you hear as the tune begins. And it was more Charles' song than anyone else's--his "breakthrough" into the music business as a young unknown. He in turn raided one of the most iconic songs in traditional southern soul--the Staple Singers' 
On "Slow Roll It" Sheba had none of the chops of the seasoned R&B/Blues singer she was to become over the next dozen years. What she had was the flirty, half-innocent precociousness of the young, and it's interesting to note, if you listen closely to her "Slow Roll It," that Sheba lets out a girlish giggle identical to the one young 
