soul music
Sebastian Scotney
One can only marvel at the versatility of Ruby Turner. As a vocalist, she spans the whole blues/soul/ R&B spectrum, and has been a major presence on the British scene since the late Seventies. Her unvarying capacity just to step forward and deliver a strong line, clear words, and powerful emotions are an unfailing and unique aspect of the musical life of this country. Perhaps the Halls of Fame and the honours system have a bit of catching-up to do.She has done everything from taking a major role in the British blues movement at the instigation of Alexis Korner, to performing Ray Charles Read more ...
howard.male
Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had every intention of making Songs Of Our Native Daughters featuring Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell and Amythyst Kiah my Album of the year. It’s a solid work of great beauty, elegance and substance. But you can read my thoughts on it elsewhere on The Arts Desk. And the album is number eight in Rolling Stone’s Top 40 of the year, as well as being Iggy Pop’s personal album of the year, so more waffle on it from me is neither here nor there. Whereas the still relatively unknown Louisiana pop group Seratones may still be new enough to this game Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I was just released from the hospital…the doctor told me that the medicine can’t do me no good. They told me what I have is beyond medical science…he told me that what I have is more serious than cancer. He told me what I have is a very, very bad case of the blues. I found out the best remedy for the blues is to be with the one you love.”This astonishing spoken declaration comes during the first half of Jerry Washington’s “Right Here is Where You Belong”, a 1972 single which its performer, producer and writer self-released on his own Top Pop label. Washington’s day job was as a New York Read more ...
joe.muggs
In the eight years since theartsdesk last spoke to Carl Craig, a lot has happened. He moved from his native Detroit for a sojourn in Barcelona (partly for ease of access to his summer DJ residencies in Ibiza), then recently returned. He's reinvented tracks from his back catalogue for orchestra, in a style he dubbed "action and adventure" - certainly more John Williams than Debussy - and has performed them as such around the world. He's successfully built the Detroit Love brand for compilations and club nights via his Planet E label, featuring the city's unsung heroes like Stacey Pullen, Read more ...
peter.quinn
Jazz Voice unfailingly supplies a gigantic sugar-rush of auditory pleasure, and this year’s edition was no exception. Arranged, scored and conducted by the brilliant Guy Barker, the evening’s opener saw rising US vocalist Judi Jackson and the EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra transform Nirvana’s brooding “Come As You Are” into a swaggering, Vegas-style workout.With a sound firmly rooted in classic Motown and Stax, the US-born, Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Jalen N’Gonda gave the world premiere of his self-penned “Angel Doll”, displaying a marble-smooth tone and pitch-perfect falsetto, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It's Gonna Take a Miracle” just missed out on a mainstream US Top 40 placing after The Royalettes issued it as a single in June 1965. But the song had staying power. In 1971 Laura Nyro covered it, choosing it as the title track for the album she made with LaBelle. Deniece Williams’s version hit big in 1982.The song’s co-writer was Teddy Randazzo. He had arranged and produced The Royalettes’s interpretation, the first time it was issued. Their reading is as he conceived the song: the template for what followed. The other vocal group most associated with Randazzo is Little Anthony and the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Rochdale boasts quite a number of star turns but those that spring readily to mind are William Walton, Andy Kershaw, Barb Jungr, Gracie Fields and Lisa Stansfield. And here’s a good pub quiz question: what, apart from Rochdale, links Gracie and Lisa? It’s their shared surname! Gracie dropped the first four letters and rearranged the remaining five. Lisa, who was born up the road in Manchester, kept it.It’s 30 years this year since Stansfield made her solo debut with Affection, which delivered several hit singles and which, with sales of five million, is the biggest of the eight albums she’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Michael Kiwanuka looks set to conquer. His previous two albums set him up as the sensitive singer-songwriter who tips his hat to the muscular soul music of Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield; the lone troubadour who’s clearly listened to more than a smidgeon of tough-edged indie in his time. Iggy Pop kept playing him on BBC Radio 6. The people at HBO used his “Cold Little Heart” as the theme for their flagship Hollywood star series Big Little Lies. In this light, and because his momentum doesn’t falter, Kiwanuka could be his Back to Black-style commercial monster.The Winehouse comparison is apt Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I had my first inter-racial relationship.” Moments after walking on stage and before the first song, PP Arnold is reminiscing about when she first arrived in Britain in 1966. The America she knew had barriers, ones she found weren’t apparent in “Swinging London.” Later in this show she says, “Mick Jagger invited me for a walk in the park.” That year, Ike & Tina Turner were billed on The Rolling Stones’ UK tour and she was an Ikette, one of the backing singers and dancers.Although she confessed “I know, I’m a bit long-winded tonight” during the encore, this appearance was about her voice Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Over two days in 1972, the great Aretha Franklin, undoubtedly one of the greatest American voices of the 20th century, performed and recorded gospel classics in Los Angeles, with a predominantly African-American audience, the red-hot Los Angeles Community Gospel Choir and the support of Rev James Cleveland. She was generally known for her soul classics, including “Say a Little Prayer”, “Think”, “Respect”, “I Never Loved a Man”, “Natural Woman” and many others, but she had grown up in the church under the tutelage of her father the Rev CL Franklin, one of Detroit’s most fiery preachers.Warners Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Chrissie Hynde has always loved a cover song. But never before, has she strayed so far from her comfort zone. The 14 covers on Valve Bone Woe are a million miles from new wave. They're a kind of jazz odyssey - a journey from bebop to easy listening via early soul. It couldn't be any less like what usually happens when a rock star 'goes jazz'.Hynde's approach is both sophisticated and tasteful. Along with her Valve Bone Woe Ensemble, the Pretenders' singer explores songs as diverse as "Wild is the Wind" and Charlie Mingus's "Meditation (for a Pair of Wire Cutters)". The band Read more ...
Owen Richards
As days get shorter and the sun tucks itself behind a blanket of clouds, Whitney return with the bittersweet sound of summer ending. Forever Turned Around is the long-awaited follow up to 2016’s Light Upon the Lake, and the band have lost none of their melodic magic. It is old city soul brought to the hills and forests of the American frontier, and a much welcome break in these trying times.Opener and lead single “Giving Up” shows the band have opted for evolution over revolution. Those trademark falsetto vocals are still there, the horn-led breakdown and uplifting chorus are very on brand. Read more ...