|
 |
"I Ain't Scared No More" Luther Lackey (21st Century) Composed by Luther Lackey
***********
February 3, 2013:
Read Daddy B. Nice's exclusive "When I'm Gone" Interview with Luther Lackey by scrolling down this page to Tidbits #5.
**********March 1, 2023:
 Luther Lackey: Squandered Talent? Luther Lackey has released one of his few new singles of the last decade.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "I Still Believe In You" on YouTube.
It has some of the qualities of the songs from Lackey's prime, but you can scratch the rust from the many years of inactivity. Despite a valiant effort at embellishment in the latter half "I Still Believe" doesn't instill a lot of belief or confidence.
I'm going to recommend an article about Luther Lackey, Sweet Angel and Mel Waiters (with asides on Bigg Robb, Carl Marshall and others from that era) written by Chuck Eddy in "The Village Voice" in Lackey's prime around 2010. The landscape of southern soul has changed so much since then! Mel Waiters, of course, has passed away, and Sweet Angel and Luther Lackey have for all practical purposes quit the scene, barring a recording hiccup here and there.
Southern Soul Guide: Sweet Angel, Mel Waiters, and Luther Lackey
 Sweet Angel, a Memphis insurance agent and mother of two with a “sturdy build, big thighs, big hips,” a feather boa, and minimal platinum-blonde hair was behind one of 2010’s best singles, reminiscing about being 25 and having a crush on a big-time Southern Soul singer named Bobby Rush. For “A Girl Like Me,” Sweet Angel borrows the incessant, repetitive, knee-deep funk vamp Rush once used on “Sue,” a stuttering extended tease from 1982 about being deflowered as a teenager. Around 1990 or so, if her song is to be believed, Sweet Angel applied to be one of Rush’s dancing girls. He told her she was too young, so she tried again 10 years later — at 35 — “Ohhh, yeah, that’s a good age.” But 155 pounds? “Too little.” Eventually, her singing career takes off instead. She opens for Rush in Mississippi. “You look like one of my dancing girls,” he finally concedes. “You just ain’t got no hair.” Halfway through the song’s six minutes, her talking switches to singing, and her register drops to a gloating growl.
Sweet Angel — real name, Clifetta Dobbins — is now 46. Which, in Southern Soul, still makes her a sweet young thing. Bobby Rush himself was born in Louisiana before World War II, played with Elmore James in the mid-’50s, and wields a deep-fried ham-hock drawl that’s still going strong: “Night Fishin’,” from 2005, even spawned a stack of answer records. Denise LaSalle is 71 — her one pop hit, “Trapped By a Thing Called Love,” came and went in 1971 — but in 2010 she scored on Southern Soul’s chitlin circuit with “Older Woman,” about how aging improved her bedroom technique (“Like a Whirlpool, I got different speeds”), so now she’s looking for a younger man who can keep up. Dirty  old Bobby Rush, “over 72,” actually gets the final word on that song. But 54-year-old, white-haired Texan Mel Waiters, probably Southern Soul’s biggest name these days (he even plays up north sometimes), opts out of the competition on 2010’s “I Ain’t Gone Do It”: “Ain’t one of them young boys make you scream and shout/You gonna mess me around and make me throw my back out!”
That this self-branded “grown folks music” still flourishes, in an age when mainstream r&b has increasingly become the juvenile province of Beavises babbling about “boobies,” is some kind of miracle. Black music, as Nelson George pointed out throughout his 1988 book The Death of Rhythm & Blues, was largely an adult commodity in the time of adolescent rock ‘n’ roll. But hip-hop changed that forever, and disco-era assimilation dreams had already begun to sever r&b from the local economics of black communities. When George wrote a 1983 Voice roundup of soul journeymen Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, and Z.Z. Hill — aged 45, 45, and 43 at the time — they were already considered anachronistic relics by major labels too coastal to care, even though raspy Texan Hill’s indie label Down Home was then blindsiding Northeastern provincials by staying on Billboard‘s black album chart for almost two years. The piece was titled “Till the Day They Die,” as George deduced that middle-aged black men “with no skills other than singing, dancing, and guitar picking” have few financial alternatives other than to keep plugging away until they’re gone. And that’s pretty much what this trinity did — Hill passed in 1984, Taylor in 2000, Davis in 2005.
Where they live on is in recent Southern Soul songs, where they’re frequently name-checked as patron saints. Malaco, the grassroots Jackson, Mississippi, company that resuscitated all three singers’ careers — and old-school soul itself — in the ’80s and ’90s, is still around, too, though it’s widely diversified into Christian and catalog items. Daddy B. Nice, whose website at SouthernSoulRnB.com indispensably chronicles/reviews/aggregates the subculture from the inside, pegs the dominant imprints now, in terms of promoting new talent, as Ecko in Memphis (founded by Malaco expat John Ward, who produces everything and runs the studio) and Carlsbad, California, concern CDS, where New Orleans–via-Nashville vet and former Neville Brothers sideman Carl Marshall has become integral to the creative mix. Other, even tinier companies — in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana — fill in holes.
These labels will never challenge the overpowering studio bands of Deep Soul’s heyday; Ecko albums inevitably credit Ward with “rhythm tracks,” and the arrangements are consistently functional if infrequently ingenious. The spotlight is on the singers, who almost inevitably partake in a church-testifying richness and grit that r&b otherwise abandoned in favor of icy detachment and empty melisma decades ago. In eternal blues-and-country storytelling tradition, the songwriting can get formulaic, especially as themes rework into memes: Lots of cheating-with-your-best-friend’s-spouse songs, advice from all fronts of the monogamy wars, easy oral-sex jokes way less shocking than they pretend (those the specialty of Marvin “Candy Licker” Sease, who died at 65 in early February), and slides/steps/shuffles/spanks for the family reunion. The CD packaging looks endearingly cut-rate, and quality control often yields to quantity-of-product — Alabama romancer Sir Charles Jones might be blessed with the millennium’s most luscious late-night baritone, but his 2010 Mardi Gras Records all-covers set seemed mostly perfunctory.
What’s amazing is how much of this music transcends its limitations: Gerod Rayborn’s October release Call Before You Come!!! — backed by what sounds like a full band, and featuring several men and women sharing Rayborn’s last name — is as intense a marriage-soul battle as any since mid-’80s Womack & Womack. Who’s Rockin’ You, the new Ecko 10-songer from 51-year-old Texas smoothie Donnie Ray, as soakable a quiet-storm-throwback bubblebath as the latest (quite good) albums by El Debarge or R. Kelly — neither of which is any more verbally distinctive, neither of which can touch Ray’s most sugar-sweet beach-soul hooks. That Thang Thang, out in late 2010 from Ray’s more huskily shouting and alcohol-obsessed Clarksdale, Mississippi, labelmate O.B. Buchana, is funkier, funnier, and even catchier, with an excellent Bobby Womack cover and a focus track where a couple expend equal energy fighting and fucking.
The Preacher’s Wife, last year’s unusually lovely and thoughtful album by Buchana’s brother, Luther Lackey, who writes his own songs and clearly draws inspiration from country and gospel as well as Sam Cooke, made my Pazz & Jop Top 10; belatedly, so did the self-released mid-2009 Jerri Curl Muzik by Bigg Robb, a prolific graduate of Ohio’s talkbox-funk scene who Southern Soul partisans have accepted despite the fact that he doesn’t exactly sing — guests like Carl Marshall and Shirley Murdock and “Larry from the Floaters” mostly do that for him — and his deluge of lengthy albums revolve around a Gap Band/Cameo default setting. That’s as trendy as this genre gets: Robb learned his trade from Zapp’s Roger Troutman, and Kurtis Blow raps on Jerri Curl. So caveat emptor, if “datedness” bugs you.
Give or take the occasional flicker on lower rungs of the blues or “urban adult” chart, this stuff barely registers on Billboard anymore. But to me, it still feels like 2011 anyway, and presumably it also does to the primarily working-class, baby-boomer Southern black crowds who pack outskirts-of-town roadhouses and Elks Lodges every weekend — and arena package tours and state-park picnic spots every spring and summer — to watch these artists. Mom-and-pop record stores and local radio (some stations, like WMPR in Jackson, Mississippi, now Web-streamable) get the word out. And if the national recession and music-biz depression have wreaked havoc on both small neighborhood businesses and the lives of the fans who rely on them, Southern Soul doesn’t whitewash hard times, either. Luther Lackey croons about clipping coupons and shopping at yard sales and shining shoes when unemployment turns permanent. Bigg Robb, who like Lackey sometimes comes off like a small-town minister consoling his down-and-out flock, keeps the party going even when he can’t afford to go to the mall. Mel Waiters does “Everything’s Going Up (But My Paycheck)”; Sweet Angel does “I Like The Money But I Don’t Like the Job,” about keeping her daughters fed. “I Lived It All,” Carl Marshall’s 60-years-on look back at his impoverished youth, will tear your heart a new ventricle. One of my favorite 2009 singles was the hilarious plea-to-Obama “I Need a Bailout,” by Austin’s CDBaby-distributed Larry Shannon Hargrove. This ain’t no VIP Room — the action takes place at holes in the wall, or even VFW halls. Somehow, the singers stay good-humored about it.
And I’m sorry, but Aloe Blacc’s “I Need a Dollar” — to pick a better-than-average example of the alleged retro-soul typically embraced in indie-adult-alternative circles these days — sounds, in comparison, like the tastefully antiseptic HBO theme it is. And if the museum embalmers at Anti- Records hadn’t Anglicized them into arugula suitable to dour and delicate Wilco sensibilities, Mavis Staples and Bettye LaVette could maybe still sound half as alive as, say, the call-in-advice-show title-talker on Rubenesque raunch queen Ms. Jody’s doubly horny new Ecko album, Keepin’ It Real. If you’re into Sharon Jones or Cee-Lo dressing up vintage, that’s your choice. But if so, you really owe it to yourself to acknowledge a thriving world where soul music, as originally understood, never stopped being vital — where it’s something more than mannerisms reverently simulated from a distance. A place where, as Bigg Robb would say, you can still smell chicken, catfish, and pork chops all cooking in the same grease.
January 15, 2013:Daddy B. Nice's Profile: In the fable of the princess and the pea, the princess's subjects keep adding mattresses but the princess still feels the hard little pea beneath all the springs and down. Luther Lackey is Southern Soul's princess. Everything that happens (and doesn't happen) in his musical career is trauma for the hyper-sensitive singer/songwriter.
How many of us would be willing to start a song:
"People say they don't like me," as Luther Lackey does in "(Will You Miss Me) When I'm Gone"?
Sure, it's narcissistic. But it's also (as Lackey reminds us) "reality."
"Growing up in Clarksdale" (Ms.), Lackey continues,
"Was a living hell.
Classmates can be so mean.
I believe they all hated me."
And, a little later in the song:
"Trying to sell my songs
So I can pay my child support.
People say I'm famous
But I'm still broke."
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "When I'm Gone" on YouTube while you read.
Where Lackey does go wrong is in thinking he's different from the rest of us (at least the great majority of us) who endure slamming business doors, social snubs, nitty-gritty poverty and the general apathy of the more well-off in quiet desperation and determination.
What makes Lackey so special is his willingness to vocalize his pain. It's his way of interpreting his personal blues. He's been able to hold onto much of his youthful innocence, and the intensity of experience that results is the secret to his creativity. He goes places the rest of us swore off as unnecessarily hurtful long ago.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "I Ain't Scared No More" on YouTube while you read.
Lackey's main problem is himself. A natural storyteller, a distinctive if idiosyncratic vocalist, and a gifted multi-instrumentalist, Lackey cobbles together tunes as quickly as a shoemaker. The results are almost always competent and frequently fascinating, but individual songs are seldom given the embellishments of background singers and thoroughly arranged choruses. Instead, Luther Lackey songs roll off the creative conveyor belt at a dizzying rate, piling up in indiscriminate fashion like an unending list of dazzlingly-produced demos.
These quirks haven't deterred critics, who continue to be wowed by Lackey's instinctive skill at summoning fresh melodies and distinctive arrangements, particularly breathtaking, gospel-style harmonies.
In fact, Lackey is more than a storyteller. He is a poet--the poet of Southern Soul. In Southern Soul music, where the lyrics tend to be either brazen or innocuous, Lackey's lyrics constitute miracles of compression, the imagery as vivid as classic American poets like William Carlos Williams.
"The preacher rolled up
In his hundred thousand dollar car,"
Lackey sings in "Just Because He's Preaching," and you instantly see the scene.
"He had some bodyguards with him
So you couldn't shake his hand,
And if your tithe's not paid up,
Then you can't talk to that man.
"Something else I saw
When we got inside.
Bunch of fine women in the front row
With dresses up to their thighs."
Is your Daddy B. Nice the only guy who thinks Luther Lackey is the best thing to hit Southern Soul since Johnnie Taylor?, I wrote in my review of Luther Lackey's latest CD, The Contender (CDS, 2012).
What's not to like? What's not to admire?
Imagine if Sir Charles Jones dropped a new CD annually. Imagine if O. B. Buchana or Donnie Ray, who do release annual albums, presented material this compelling every time out.
Imagine if Clarksdale, Mississippi natives Buchana and Lackey got together like the Everly Brothers or Sam and Dave. And what's more, imagine those two incredible voices intertwining on vocals.
Luther Lackey has received more laudatory reviews here than any other Southern Soul artist of the last decade, and yet Lackey languishes in a musical limbo, under-appreciated, under-played and seldom seen.
If Lackey toured with the intensity of Sir Charles Jones and T. K. Soul, would he reach the "tipping point" in becoming a fan favorite?
Does the fact that Lackey is a studio recording genius, reclusive and introspective, concentrating on product rather than appearances, explain his difficulty in drawing legions of fans?...
Or is the very problem the fact that Luther Lackey excels at making albums? Not so much singles?
One thing is for sure. Luther Lackey feels the sting of every rejection, every slight and every explicit or implied dismissal. It's Luther Lackey against the world, and maybe that's what fuels the artist. Perhaps only a burning and seething ambition born of constant frustration is what Lackey needs to summon his muse.
Note: Luther Lackey also appears on Daddy B. Nice's original Top 100 Southern Soul Artists (90's-00's). The "21st Century" after Luther Lackey'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.
***********
--Daddy B. Nice
About Luther Lackey (21st Century)
Born and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Luther Lackey first arrived on the scene when he logged an important songwriting credit via Mr. Zay's 2003 chitlin' circuit hit, "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday." But he had already been recording music, including country-western, since 1998, self-produced albums that never found labels or distribution: among them, My Woman Has 5 Babies But None Of Them Are Mine, I Thought I Married A Fool (which marked the first appearance of "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday")and Down South Funk.
Lackey finally made a big splash with chitlin' circuit insiders with his solo debut, I'm Talking To You (Goodtime, 2005). Two songs from the album--"Scared Of Getting Caught" and "Call Your Outside Woman"--received substantial airplay on the Stations of the Deep South, establishing Lackey as one of the most promising of the new generation of Southern Soul artists.
Lackey continued his theme of "Scared of Getting Caught" in "I Should Have Stayed Scared," the title tune of his 2007 Ecko follow-up CD. Other noteworthy singles from the album were the melodious "Number Two" and "I Don't Care Who's Gettin' It," and two blues-oriented songs, "New Orleans Blues" and "The Blues Is Alright (Tribute to Little Milton."
Jody's Got My Problem (Ecko, 2009) was less successful, relying to a large extent on humorous takes that failed to find an audience. The "scared-of-getting-caught" theme went through yet another permutation in the song, "I Thought The Baby Was Mine."
Having written "Forbidden Love Affair," a popular, preacher-oriented song for fellow artist Vick Allen, Luther Lackey delved into his own preacher-themed project on his next album, The Preacher's Wife (Ecko, 2010). The first single from the album was the song, "It Ain't Easy Being The Preacher's Wife." However, the dominant song from the LP was "If She's Cheating On Me, I Don't Wanna Know."
In many respects his finest album, Lackey's Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man (Ecko, 2011) was a cornucopia of strong melodies and memorable lyrics, including another "scared-of-getting-caught"-themed tune, this time embellished with an original, steel-drum-sounding arrangement, "I Ain't Scared No More."
Other popular singles from the album included "Hold My Mule," "Could She Be The Woman Of My Dreams," "Rebound Love Affair" and two winning reprises from previous CD's: "If She's Cheatin' On Me, I Don't Wanna Know" and "I Don't Care Who's Getting It."
Lackey switched labels in 2012, moving from Memphis' Ecko Records to California's CDS Records for The Contender, which notched popular singles in "Blind Blind Snake" and another preacher-oriented song, "Just Because He's Preaching."
Early in 2013 Luther Lackey left CDS Records with an announcement that he would be producing his own music.
Luther Lackey Discography
I Thought I Married A Fool (Luther Lackey, 2000)
Down South Funk (LuLack, 2002)
I'm Talking To You (Goodtime, 2005)
I Should Have Stayed Scared (Ecko, 2007)
Jody's Got My Problems (Ecko, 2009)
The Preacher's Wife (Ecko, 2010)
Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man (Ecko, 2011)
The Contender (CDS, 2012)
Sample and/or Buy Luther Lackey CD's in Daddy B. Nice's CD Store.
To automatically link to all the references, awards and citations of Luther Lackey on the Southern Soul website, go to Lackey, Luther in Daddy B. Nice's Comprehensive Index.
Song's Transcendent Moment
"While we was talking,
Another man
Walked over to her
And asked her to dance.
I said, 'Man, is you blind,
Or just can't see,
That this fine woman
Man, she with me.'
I ain't scared no more.
No, I'm not backing down.
I ain't gone run away.
I'm gonna stand my ground."
Tidbits
1.
January 13, 2013: Luther Lackey on YouTube
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "When I'm Gone" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Just Because He's Preaching" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "No More Of My Loving" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "I Don't Care Who's Getting It" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Trapped In The Walls" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Scared Of Getting Caught" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Two Minute Man" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Blind Blind Snake" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Jody's Got My Problems" on YouTube.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Call Your Outside Woman" on YouTube.
2.
January 13, 2013:
Shirley Brown covered Luther Lackey's "Call Your Outside Woman" (from Lackey's I'M TALKING TO YOU CD) under the title "You Ain't Gonna Get No More Of My Love" on her well-received Unleashed album.
3.
January 13, 2013:
Luther Lackey's last three CD's (The Contender (2012), Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man (2011), and The Preacher's Wife (2010)) have all received "Five stars, Southern Soul Heaven" Reviews from Daddy B. Nice. Lackey is the only recording artist to accomplish this feat. Read the CD reviews in the "Profile" and "Tidbits" section of Daddy B. Nice's Original Artist Guide to Luther Lackey.
************
4.
June 10, 2012:
LUTHER LACKEY: The Contender (CDS) Five Stars ***** Can't Miss. Pure Southern Soul Heaven. Is your Daddy B. Nice the only guy who thinks Luther Lackey is the best thing to hit Southern Soul since Johnnie Taylor? What's not to like? What's not to admire?
Imagine if Sir Charles Jones dropped a new CD annually. Imagine if O. B. Buchana or Donnie Ray, who do release annual albums, presented material this compelling every time out.
Imagine if Clarksdale, Mississippi natives Buchana and Lackey got together like the Everly Brothers or Sam and Dave. And what's more, imagine those two incredible voices intertwining on vocals.
Luther Lackey has received more laudatory reviews here than any other Southern Soul artist of the last decade, and yet Lackey languishes in a musical limbo, under-appreciated, under-played and seldom seen.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Just Because He's Preaching" on YouTube while you read.
If Lackey toured with the intensity of Sir Charles Jones and T. K. Soul, would he reach the "tipping point" in becoming a fan favorite?
Does the fact that Lackey is a studio recording genius, reclusive and introspective, concentrating on product rather than appearances, explain his difficulty in drawing legions of fans?
Lackey's albums, like the vintage albums of Marvin Gaye, Van Morrison, The Band, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Sly & The Family Stone, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, are awash in rich melodies, acerbic lyrics, aggressive vocals, and stunning background arrangements with breathtaking, layered harmonies.
Or is the very problem the fact that Luther Lackey excels at making albums? Not so much singles?
One thing is for sure. Luther Lackey feels the sting of every rejection, every slight and every explicit or implied dismissal. It's Luther Lackey against the world, and maybe that's what fuels the artist. Perhaps only a burning and seething ambition born of constant frustration is what Lackey needs to summon his muse.
The artistic fires burn deeply in Lackey, and it's been suggested here that perhaps Lackey's songs are too complex, too witty, too well-done, if that's even possible.
But do we really want a dumbed-down Luther Lackey churning out "Booty Roll's?" I don't think so.
Last year your Daddy B. Nice elevated "Hold My Mule," an otherwise obscure song from Lackey's last album, to one of the highest spots on Daddy B. Nice's Top 25 Southern Soul Singles of 2011, writing:
9. "Hold My Mule"---------Luther Lackey
Great foray into folklore and fable. The song has an aura of timelessness. But the best part for the Southern Soul fan is hearing a less cerebral Lackey deliver perhaps his most unguarded vocal ever. His humming in the chorus is to die for.
Daddy B. Nice Honors Luther Lackey as 2011's Best Southern Soul Male Vocalist ("Hold My Mule") and Best Southern Soul Arranger/Producer (Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man CD)
See Daddy B. Nice's Best Of Southern Soul Awards: 2011.
"Hold My Mule" didn't "dumb down" Lackey's ouevre. It channeled Lackey's creativity through a more direct and accessible metaphor, one less self-involved, more humorous.
And Lackey's new album, The Contender,
coming on the heels of Lackey's surprising switch of record labels (Ecko to CDS), resumes exactly where "Hold My Mule" left off. Lackey focuses on a simple metaphor, the same "blind snake" (the one situated between a man's legs) Bobby Rush first drew attention to with his tune of the same title in 2009.
Lackey borrows Rush's concept along with the Ecko background arrangement from Denise LaSalle's "Mississippi Woman" and comes up with a propulsive, careening single even the most attention-bombarded listener can keep up with.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "Blind Blind Snake" on YouTube while you read.
See Daddy B. Nice's #10 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single for May 2012.
"Blind Blind Snake" segues into "We Need To Work It Out," a song that references Lackey's aforementioned mentor Johnnie Taylor's "Cheaper To Keep Her." And although comparisons between the storied J.T. and Lackey are admittedly stretches, the master and the student do share the same penchant for lyrical consistency and sharp-edged lyrics.
"I Think She's Cheating On Me" is a typical Lackey ballad, agenda-driven, impeccably sung, with additional harmonies of note.
"Thang (Ain't Everything)" is a reminder that Lackey, like Bob Dylan on "Highway 61 Revisited," can lather up a fast song with a spit-shine worthy of the best.
"Just Because He's Preaching" likewise tackles one of Lackey's familiar themes.
See Daddy B. Nice's #2 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single for June 2012.
2. "Just Because He's Preaching"------------Luther Lackey
Awash in gospel/barbershop/Persuasions-on-the-street-corner harmonies, Luther Lackey's ballad dissects one of his favorite subjects, the hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness of preachers and their flocks.
"From the waist down,"
Luther warns,
"He's still a man."
"Just Because He's Preaching" is to THE CONTENDER what Ms. Jody's "When Your Give A Damn Don't Give A Damn" was to her five-star-rated MS. JODY'S IN THE HOUSE CD late last year--pure southern soul heaven.
With its repetitive, simplistic chords, "Just Because He's Preaching" is nevertheless consistently fresh-sounding, with the brunt of the inspiration in the foreground and background vocals (all performed by multi-tasker Lackey). The integrity of the song is buried in the way Lackey sings it. Lackey BELIEVES in this song.
And when Luther sings--
"While we were walking
Across the parking lot,
Preacher rolled up
In his hundred thousand dollar car..."
--the scorpion-like sting of Lackey's judgment rushes over the beautiful background of the melody with the same tension we've become accustomed to hearing in "I Should Have Stayed Scared" and other Lackey standards.
And yes, the set contains the obligatory Lackey song about being "scared": "I Got Scared Again." This outing features one of Lackey's most gentle melodies and also one of his most mellow vocals.
"I Don't Want To Go Back Home" is one of those preternaturally lyrical and melodic songs that grace every Luther Lackey CD. It's a driving song, in more ways than one. Not only does it motor to a driving beat and (at one point) a hopskipping, Isley's-style guitar. The subject is a cheating man returning home in his car and wanting to put it off rather than face his mate.
If there are any "wallflowers" on this album, they'd be "Cleaning House" and "You Will Reap What You Sow," in which Lackey falls off a bit, relegated to the more generic level of a typical artist.
The album closes with reprises of "Blind Blind Snake" and "Just Because He's Preaching." However, the track that precedes them is also one of the most lasting tracks: the scathingly autobiographical "When I'm Gone."
"People say they don't like me,
Or the way that I write and sing.
They say my songs are just too deep,
But I get the stories from reality.
Mama said, 'Son, don't forget.
Everybody's got stuff to deal with.
But you got to do your best
And remember life's a test.'"
Bridge:
"I'm tired now.
Wondering somehow..."
Chorus:
"Will you miss me when I'm gone?
Or will you party all night long?
You will miss your water when it's gone.
But will you miss me when I'm gone?"
This is the Luther Lackey we know through his music over the years. On-the-brink. Brilliant. Resentful. Dramatic. A knotted enigma poised to blossom in spectacular beauty or consuming flames.
"Growing up in Clarksdale,"
--Lackey continues--
"Life was like a living hell.
Classmates can be so mean.
I believe they all hated me.
So just to get them off of my back,
I acted a fool and I made them laugh.
Though I'm grown it's the same way now.
Some people call me just to give me
But I'm sick of it now,
And I'm wondering somehow...
Will you miss me when I'm gone?
Or will you party all night long?
You will miss your water when it's gone.
Will you miss me when I'm gone?"
Done? All the bile expunged? No way. Luther has an inexhaustible supply:
"Writing songs for this Southern Soul.
It's segregated music, why I don't know.
They play my songs on the radio.
People say I'm famous but I'm still broke.
Trying to sell my songs to pay my child support,
And can't see my kids, how it hurts me so."
That's the thing about Luther. You don't need to say it for him. He'll do it for himself, thank you.
So there you have him--one of the most fascinating of the young crop of contemporary Southern Soul stars--with another five-star album, the first Southern Soul CD since Ms. Jody's that you can spin beginning to end, again and again, and still want to hear more.
But tell me. Will YOU miss Luther Lackey before he's gone?
--Daddy B. Nice
Bargain-Priced Luther Lackey THE CONTENDER CD.
Sample or Buy Luther Lackey songs from THE CONTENDER on I-Tunes.
************
5.
January 20, 2013: THE DADDY B NICE INTERVIEW
LUTHER LACKEY LEAVING SOUTHERN SOUL WITH "WHEN I'M GONE" TOUR 
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "When I'm Gone" on YouTube while you read.
DBN: So Luther, what's this I hear about you possibly leaving Southern Soul?
LUTHER: The time has come, my friend. You know, the hardest business is the entertainment business. You reap the reward if you can reach that plateau. But I've been out here since 2000, when I wrote "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday." That's the song that started it all.
I wrote it on a whim, while I was working in a factory, working twelve-hour shifts most of those years. And my ex-wife, she showed less and less interest until Friday came around. And I was telling a friend, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think she only wants to see me on Friday."
I was doing country music in those years and hitting the wall. You know what a producer told me about Charlie Pride? There's a reason there has been only one black country singer. That's because when Charlie came in they locked the door behind him so he couldn't out and nobody else could get in.
But to get back to the blues, my daddy was one of the best "that never was." His name was Wade Walton. He recorded a song called "Shake 'Em On Down" in 1958, around the same time they were recording Muddy Waters, not long before guys like Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton were picking up on the blues in England, listening to those records.
"Shake 'Em On Down" disappeared in the US but became a hit in Germany. I had a buddy who came back from Europe and said, "Hey, tell Luther, I saw his daddy's album Shake 'Em On Down in Germany and The Netherlands."
Anyway, I was paid $500 from Mardi Gras down in New Orleans for "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday"--
DBN: --Which became a hit for Mister Zay.
LUTHER: Right, and I've never gotten a royalty check since.
DBN: By the way, was that you singing background on the Zay recording?
LUTHER: Yeah, that was me.
DBN: I thought it was, and I wrote that it was, but truthfully, I was never sure.
LUTHER: And that song was as close to a "hit" as I've ever come. And this chitlin' circuit. . . This is almost like hell.
There was this guy, James Bennett, who had a record store in Jackson at the time--this was 2000--and he was selling my I THOUGHT I MARRIED A FOOL album, which was half-country, half-soul. That's the CD that had my version of "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday, and I never saw a cent from that.
Listen to Luther Lackey singing "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday" on YouTube while you read.
LUTHER: I may have done three shows all of last year. I can't pay the bills. I can't make my child support. I've seen guys selling my bootlegged albums out of the trunks of cars on street corners. When you've been snake-bit so many times, you begin to question everything.
DBN: I just assumed you didn't want to tour that much. I never see you on my Concert Calendar. So are you saying you actually want to announce your retirement, and you want me to post it on the website?
LUTHER: Yes, exactly. Due to a lack of demand for Luther Lackey in live shows, I'm announcing my retirement. And put in my phone number. And I'm going to perform "When I'm Gone" everywhere I go.
601-951-3617 For Booking DBN: I don't have any problem with you retiring, Luther--as long as you come back like Brett Favre in 2014.
LUTHER: (Laughs)
DBN: Let me tell you: "When I'm Gone" is the most brutally honest song I've just about ever heard.
You know how most people go around, trying to act cool, trying to act happy--maybe happier than they really are--so as to feel at least equal or superior to all of the other seemingly contented people out there?
LUTHER: Yeah, yeah.
DBN: In "When I'm Gone" you just throw all that shit out the window. You bare your soul. The things you bring up in that song. . . The cruelty of childhood classmates. And then, tying the humor you used in childhood as a defense mechanism to your persona as an artist today. Wow. What a leap. It's an amazing song. I also like the reference to Southern Soul being "segregated" music. That is so true, and so obvious I'd forgotten.
LUTHER: Oh thanks.
DBN: The other thing I wanted to tell you is that Mister Zay never got rich. No one in Southern Soul is making money hand over foot except B. B. King, and he's a freak of nature.
LUTHER: "When I'm Gone" was me hitting absolute bottom. It took me this long to find out that a "hit" in Southern Soul isn't a "hit" in the mainstream.
DBN: Yeah, guys like me are probably to blame for that, making the whole scene appear to be more attractive than it really is. Sometimes I imagine an angry mob of artists who got into it for the money running after me to crucify me.
LUTHER: (Laughs)
DBN: Just a few days ago I had a Georgia-based artist--you've probably heard of him--(name omitted)
LUTHER: Yeah.
DBN: He'd hit the desperate point like you have and he was convinced he was being "black-balled." I was maybe a little hard on him. I was trying to be honest, but I told him he'd never sent me any CD's or mp3's in all these years, and that what little I knew of him I'd had to scratch and claw out of the Internet. In other words, he'd never been inclined to market himself to me, who was so ready and willing to push his bandwagon.
But the main thing I told him was that for an artist there are two career issues--the creative part and the business part--and for most performers they are mutually exclusive.
LUTHER: Sure.
DBN: Everything most artists need to make music--creativity, solitude, inner peace--all that stuff gets thrown out the window when it's time to market yourself. You have to call on strangers and face the dreaded word "No.' And many artists, if they do get into the business side of their careers, frequently can't get back to the creative side.
LUTHER: All that is deep and true. I've fucked up every business decision I've ever made. "When I'm Gone"... It's like a story of my ultimate failure.
I was in Mobile, Alabama and I wrote "Forbidden Love Affair" for Vick Allen. Vick said, "If it's get big, I'm going to take care of you." And as you know, it did get big. Well, I never got a cent. And none of my subsequent "preacher" songs has become a hit. But there again, I know Vick ain't laughing all the way to the bank. He's come through for me time and again. Vick was grateful for the song and he acknowledges me when he sings it. You can't ask for more than that.
I sold "Blind Snake" to Bobby Rush for $200, and I'll never see another penny from that.
DBN: Oh, you wrote that for Bobby? I thought you'd gotten the "blind snake" idea from him.
LUTHER: That's what I mean. Yeah, so when I got to the low point of writing "When I'm Gone" it was like I was writing my obituary.
DBN: You went places in that song that most of us would never have the courage to go.
LUTHER: Oh, that reminds me of something you went into on your website a few years back, another example of my lack of business sense.
I got a call one day when I lost the ex-wife. "Hey, man, you know who I am? This is O.B. Buchana from Clarksdale." It turned out his mom and my aunt were clubbing buddies--they called it cafe-ing. We talked for about an hour, both of us being from Clarksdale, and O.B. talked me into telling people I was his brother.
DBN: So HE was the one who convinced you to start the biographical untruth that you were brothers?
LUTHER: Oh, did that piss off my mama. And she was right as always. It was career suicide. They couldn't say my name without thinking of O.B. Buchana. But we're still friends, there's no hard feelings. He thought it was going to work. We thought it would further my career, and it was just a dumb business decision on my part.
DBN: I know you've got a new single, "Yo Big Head in Trouble."
Sample or Buy Luther Lackey's "Yo Big Head In Trouble mp3 at CD Baby while you read.
LUTHER: Yeah, "yo big head got yo little head in trouble." I like to think of the consequences of these cheating episodes. You know, it's okay to have a mistress, as long as it's kept hidden.
DBN: Yeah, you and the French.
LUTHER: (Laughs)
DNB: I'm not crazy about "Yo Big Head," but I think it might do okay because it is a follow-up, in theme, to "Blind Blind Snake." And I think deejays will relate.
LUTHER: Yeah, I agree.
DBN: The song I'm crazy about--and even crazier about, now after talking with you--is "When I'm Gone" from THE CONTENDER album. I'll run this interview and put "When I'm Gone" in my Top Ten Singles--maybe even number one, and probably "Yo Head" too, further down. That will give you some real publicity. And I'll give you a couple of touring names.
LUTHER: That's great.
DBN: And if you ever get down on yourself, just remember the happiness you've given people. I'll be honest. We both know Mister Zay's version of "She Only Wants To See Me On Friday" was the better version. And I'd go so far as to say your vocals on your first two or three albums were--you know--a little harsh, maybe overly aggressive. And you never had that single, defining hit that puts an artist over with the audience, like "Stand Up In It" with Theodis Ealey. So from your Daddy B. Nice's long-range perspective, you were just getting started.
LUTHER: (Laughs)
DBN: But I'll tell you something, Luther. Since then, no one in Southern Soul music has done it any better. Your last three albums got consecutive, five-star, "Southern Soul Heaven" ratings on Daddy B. Nice's New CD Reviews. You're the only artist to ever accomplish that. You've written a bunch of sumptuous songs that Southern Soul would be poorer for not having. Take care, man.
LUTHER: Hey, Daddy. Thanks for everything, man. It was a lot of fun. I'll keep you posted.
Daddy B. Nice notes: Call Luther Lackey at 601-951-3617 to book him for his "When I'm Gone" Farewell Tour.
Read more about Luther Lackey and his song "When I'm Gone" in Daddy B. Nice's new "21st Century" Artist Guide to Luther Lackey.
Sample or Buy Luther Lackey's "When I'm Gone" mp3/The Contender CD at iTunes.
If You Liked. . . You'll Love
If you liked The Beatles' "Fool On The Hill," you'll love Luther Lackey's "I Ain't Scared No More."
Honorary "B" Side
"If She's Cheatin' On Me I Don't Wanna Know"
|
|
I Ain't Scared No More
CD: Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man
Label: Ecko
|
If She's Cheatin' On Me I Don't Wanna Know
CD: Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man
Label: Ecko
|
Could She Be The Woman Of My Dreams
CD: Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man
Label: Ecko
|
Hold My Mule
CD: Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man
Label: Ecko
|
I Should Have Stayed Scared
CD: I Should Have Stayed Scared
Label: Ecko
|
She Only Wants To See Me On Friday
CD: I'm Talking To You
Label: Goodtime
|
The Blues Is Alright (Tribute to Little Milton)
CD: I Should Have Stayed Scared
Label: Ecko
|
When I'm Gone
CD: The Contender
Label: CDS
|
Blind Blind Snake
CD: The Contender
Label: CDS
|
Sample or Buy
The Contender |
Call Your Outside Woman
CD: I'm Talking To You
Label: Goodtime
|
I'm Scared Of Getting Caught
CD: I'm Talking To You
Label: Goodtime
|
It Ain't Easy Being The Preacher's Wife
CD: The Preacher's Wife
Label: Ecko
|
Just Because He's Preaching
CD: The Contender
Label: CDS
|
Sample or Buy
The Contender |
Mister Can I Shine Your Shoes
CD: The Preacher's Wife
Label: Ecko
|
New Orleans Blues
CD: I Should Have Stayed Scared
Label: Ecko
|
Number Two
CD: I Should Have Stayed Scared
Label: Ecko
|
I Don't Care Who's Gettin' It
CD: Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man
Label: Ecko
|
Rebound Love Affair
CD: Married Lyin' Cheatin' Man
Label: Ecko
|
|
