LEGENDARY FORMER BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS LEAD SINGER'S LATEST ALBUM
INCLUDES DISTINCTIVE RENDITIONS OF CLASSICS BY RAY CHARLES, OTIS
REDDING, SAM & DAVE, AND SAM COOKE
The latest album by legendary vocalist David Clayton-Thomas delivers
splendidly on its succinct title. Soul Ballads, now available in the
U.S. on Airline Records after its initial release in Canada (where the
singer resides), consists of 10 seminal soul ballads, every one of
them expertly interpreted by Clayton-Thomas. If you didn't know
better, you might think these timeless anthems were created
specifically for David to wrap his warm, expressive pipes around.
"The keyboard player for Blood, Sweat & Tears for many years during
the '80s was Lou Pomanti. And he'd been bugging me for the longest
time to do an album of all those great songs that we used to do
together back in the old bar days, when we played five shows a night
on what they called the Yonge Street strip here in Toronto," says
David, who was in the midst of completing his autobiography and about
to receive his star on Canada's Walk of Fame when he decided to make
this album. "I didn't have much new original material. But I called
Lou up and I said, 'Lou, I think the time has come. Let's do it!'"
In addition to playing piano throughout, Pomanti produced the set in
Toronto. "We didn't go looking for obscure songs that nobody had ever
done before. We went looking for those great iconic tunes,"
Clayton-Thomas continues. "We decided to do them with a full
orchestra: 15 strings, eight horns, rhythm, percussion, the whole bit.
And of course, utilizing modern recording studios."
Assembling the set list was a labor of love. "They're just basically
songs I've always wanted to sing," David says. "A very challenging
album too, because if you're going to go and put vocal performances up
against Otis Redding and Sam Cooke and Ray Charles, you'd better be on
your game, you know? Pretty tough competition. But we just set out to
basically pay tribute to all those artists and those great songs."
The set opens with David's distinctive rendition of Gladys Knight &
the Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia." We stuck very close to a lot of
the arrangements, but I didn't want to just clone the arrangements and
make it like a cover album," he says. "We wanted to bring our own
thing to it. So since I don't have the Pips, and I'm a huge Gladys
Knight fan--I think she's one of the greatest singers ever--we decided
to do the background parts with the horn section instead."
Few 1960s soul anthems pack a more powerful punch than Sam Cooke's
hopeful "A Change Is Gonna Come," its message resonating strongly with
David. "I idolize Sam Cooke, and I had sung 'A Change Is Gonna Come' a
thousand times in the old days," he says. "So it just fell right back
into place very, very easily." Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions'
similarly inspirational "People Get Ready" receives a welcome revival
on the set as well.
David underscores his love for Otis Redding by revisiting two of his
Stax/Volt classics: the tender "I've Been Loving You Too Long" (which
Otis wrote with Chicago soul great Jerry Butler) and Redding's
contemplative posthumous smash, "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay."
"Otis Redding was one of my idols, along with Bobby 'Blue' Bland and
Ray Charles," he says. Roly Platt's harmonica winds plaintively
through Clayton-Thomas' remake of "Dock Of The Bay." "That's because I
can't whistle!" David laughs.
That enduring allegiance to Brother Ray's catalog is immediately
apparent on lavishly arranged treatments of Charles' versions of
"Ruby" and "You Don't Know Me." David does a splendid job on Harold
Melvin & the Blue Notes' lush "If You Don't Know Me By Now" (the
original featured Teddy Pendergrass, another timeless soul voice), and
really brings the heat on an intense rendition of Sam & Dave's
uplifting Stax classic "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby,"
complete with a punchy horn section.
Transforming Bobby Hebb's catchy "Sunny" into an after-hours torch
number works like a charm. "The song I'm really intrigued with on the
album that I like the most and has been getting the most airplay up
here in Canada is 'Sunny,'" he reports. "And that's a song we did
totally different. We did it as a slow ballad, as opposed to the
up-tempo version that I had heard."
Throughout Soul Ballads, Clayton-Thomas' longtime love affair with
each song shines through bright and bold. "I'm a fan of every single
artist on that album," he says. "That's why I chose the songs. And
those are all artists that basically informed my style when I was
growing up. One week I'd sound like Ray Charles, the next week I'd try
to sound like Sam Cooke!"
Here Clayton-Thomas sounds like no one but himself—the same mighty
vocalist whose unforgettable front work on Blood, Sweat & Tears'
"You've Made Me So Very Happy," "And When I Die," and his self-penned
"Spinning Wheel" made the expansive group a full-fledged 1969
juggernaut.
Soul Ballads and David Clayton-Thomas: what a perfect combination!
--
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