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Solomon Burke: Soul of the Blues |
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Rhythm Blues & Soul
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Friday, 13 January 2006 19:27 |
Solomon Burke
Soul Of The Blues
BlackTop BT-1095
By John Sinclair
Solomon Burke, the legendary "King of Rock and Soul," has always loomed larger than life, no mean feat for a man of his physical stature and enormous appetites.
Father of 21 children, Bishop and spiritual leader of a vast national Pentacostal congregation, proprietor of a chain of funeral homes, owner of a multi-city limosine service, drugstore operator and distributor of his own line of roots, herbs, and religious articles, Solomon Burke engraved his name in the big book of modern musical history with a sensational string of soul singles for Atlantic Records between 1961-68.
Starting with "Just Out of Reach," cut in December 1960, Solomon Burke blazed his way across the musical horizon with smash records like "Cry To Me", "Down in the Valley", "Home In Your Heart", "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love", "If You Need Me" and other great sides too numerous to mention. (His Atlantic hits are collected in a double-CD set, Home in Your Heart: The Best of Solomon Burke.)
One of the pioneers of soul music, he used the church-drenched voice Jerry Wexler has described as "an instrument of exquisite sensitivity" to reach across the musical Mason-Dixon Line separating R&B and pop, helping lead the way for a generation of soul singers to leave the rhythm & blues ghetto and enjoy mass-market success.
After pop music re-segregated itself in the early 70s, ending the golden era of soul supremacy and sending most of its stars back to the ghetto in search of an audience which could sustain them in the absence of hit records, Solomon tended to concentrate on his ecclesiastical duties and on business opportunities outside the music industry.
An occasional Solomon Burke album surfaced from time to time, including a collection of greatest hits re-recorded "live" at a D.C. nightclub to be peddled on late-night TV, yet Burke largely seemed content to follow his ministerial calling and restrict his performances to the pulpit.
But one day this past winter, inspired by an idea that had been germinating in his brain for more than three years, Solomon Burke picked up the phone and called BlackTop Records about making a blues record here in New Orleans. "I've recorded soul records, gospel records, pop records, even country music," he told a stunned Hammond Scott, "but I've never done a blues album, and now's the time to do it."
The idea had come from one of the bishops of his church, Martha Jean "The Queen" Steinberg, a popular religious figure and Detroit radio personality who had long hosted the Blue Collar Blues Show on WQBH Radio ("Where Queen's Back Home") as a vital component of her urban ministry.
The Queen was concerned about the musical void which surrounds the current generation of Black youth and implored the great singer and spiritual leader to do something to teach the young people of today about their precious cultural heritage. "Generations that are to come need to be exposed to the beauty, the feel, the sound, the soul of the blues," Martha Jean had pleaded.
And now, after "long anticipation and great exploration," Solomon Burke was prepared to honor this "royal request from Queen MJ" by cutting an album's worth of what he termed "Certified Gold Ribbon Classics" from the modern blues repertoire. "The time has come," the Bishop solemnly proclaimed, "for Volume One."
In selecting BlackTop Records for this project, the wisdom of Solomon had led Burke to the right place. For a dozen years BlackTop producer Hammond Scott has been conducting a secular crusade of his own, recording scores of blues sessions in the classic mode with the dogged determination of a circuit-riding revivalist preacher.
Excited at the prospect of working with one of the greatest singers of the modern era, Hammond immediately turned his mind to the question of appropriate material. "When I went into this project, I felt quite a bit of pressure because of all the great records Solomon had made," Scott confesses. "Then I came up with a list of 65 tunes that might work for him, and I put them on tape for Solomon to listen to.
"He wanted to use songs that people would recognize--blues chestnuts, blues classics--but he wanted to sing the blues his own way," Hammond explains, "so he made no attempt to copy the originals. In several cases he even devised lyrics of his own instead of following the original verses exactly. But what he wanted most was to get the feeling right--to make a real blues record that would pay proper homage to the tradition."
Solomon selected 14 songs from Hammond's treasure trove and came to Ultrasonic Studios in New Orleans last April to record them with the stellar group of Crescent City players which has come to be known as the BlackTop House Band. Powered by the peerless rhythm team of bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Herman V. Ernest III, driven by the dual keyboards of organist Sammy Berfect and pianist David Torkanowsky, and topped by veteran guitarist Clarence Holliman--star of some of Bobby 'Blue' Bland's greatest Duke recordings--the BlackTop session band has jelled into a modern-day version of the magnificent combo that created countless R&B classics for a host of stand-up singers at Cosimo Matassa's New Orleans studios in the 1950s.
The BlackTop band is joined here by Burke's regular guitarist, Sam Mayfield; Solomon's son Selassie, who contributes background vocals; and a hot horn section with Eric Traub on tenor sax, Jamil Sharif on trumpet, the trombones of John Touchy and Steve Suter, and Mark Kazinoff's typically tasteful tenor and baritone saxophones, solos and arrangements.
With such splendid support, Solomon had no trouble summoning the spirits of the great blues artists to whom he was prepared to pay homage. "He was a little surprised to find that he was expected to cut his vocal parts with the band playing 'live in the studio," Hammond Scott says, "being used to coming in and laying down his vocals over the music tracks, but once we got started he would only come out of the vocal booth when the food arrived."
Burke treats each tune with deep respect, honoring the intentions of its creators with his heartfelt interpretations of the lyrics and his economical arrangements. The Willie Dixon composition "My Babe," written for the great Little Walter, gets a fresh rhythmic twist from Herman Ernest's second-line drums and benefits further from a funky Jamil Sharif trumpet solo.
Roy Brown's epochal "Good Rockin' Tonight," which sounded the clarion call of the rock & roll era way back in 1947 and twice rode the charts in revivals by Wynonie Harris and Elvis Presley, here presents Solomon Burke as a lusty blues shouter with hefty chops and a driving delivery, displayed again to good advantage on Big Joe Turner's "Crawdad Hole."
Burke takes Guitar Slim to church on "Sufferin' Mind," with his soulful reading of the lyric underlined by Sammy Berfect's Hammond B-3 organ and the moaning horn section. Slim's "Along About Midnight" gets the full blues treatment, and Solomon does justice to Chuck Willis, another vastly under-appreciated song-writer, with a down-in-the-alley version of Chuck's rarely-heard "Don't Deceive Me."
Solomon caresses Percy Mayfield's "Lonesome Highway" with his own distinctive voice and treats T-Bone Walker's "Street Walking Woman" to a nice smooth ride. Both songs are enhanced by Solomon's idiosyncratic vocal sound, so different in phrasing and texture from both T-Bone and Mayfield that it focuses welcome attention on the fine, fine lyrics of the tunes.
Blues balladeer Johnny Ace gets a loving embrace from Burke on a beautiful rendition of "Pledging My Love," Johnny's masterpiece from 1954. Conversely, Solomon discards both the original lyric and the rough Delta sound featured in Sonny Boy Williamson's only Ace Records single, "No Nights By Myself," to make an intensely personal statement in a deep soul mode that still manages to invoke the spirit and intention of its composer. Both songs, incidentally, were perfected in a single take, and the sessions with the BlackTop house band were completed in only three days.
"We'd finished the regular sessions," Hammond Scott comments, "when I remembered that there was one song I'd wanted him to hear, 'Candy' by Big Maybelle, which had not made it onto the tape. He picked right up on it and we cut it with Raymond Weber on drums and Anthony Hamilton on bass, along with Clarence Hollimon and Sammy Berfect. Then the Little Willie John song, 'Letter from My Darling,' came into Solomon's mind, and we cut it with this group the same day."
So there you have it, music lovers--a nicely balanced program of well-known rhythm & blues standards and more obscure selections from the venerable Book of the Blues, impressively presented by the once and future King of Rock & Soul with the impeccable support of the finest recording band in the South.
And Queen Martha Jean, baby, sit back with a big smile and enjoy the wonderful fruits of your wildest dream, because the Bishop has set it out just the way you wanted him to.
--New Orleans
1993
(C) 1993, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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