Refreshed

SOLOMON BURKE
Soul Alive!
(Rounder)
BOBBY PATTERSON
Soul is My Music: The Best of Bobby Patterson
(Jetstar/Sundazed)
BARRETT STRONG
The Best of Barrett Strong: The Millennium Collection
(Motown/Chronicles)
BILL WITHERS
Still Bill
Menagerie
(Columbia/Legacy)
"I'm a soul man," sang John Belushi about 20 years ago, echoing the great 60s R&B combo Sam & Dave. Nobody quite believed him; soul men were in short supply in the late 70s and early 80s, and no doubt a large part of the Blues Brothers' young audience didn't quite know what a "soul man" was. Sure, around that time they had Jeffrey Osborne, or maybe James Ingram, but let's face it: they don't count. (You could argue Prince or Michael Jackson, but, love 'em or loathe 'em, it's unfair to force them into any kind of narrow genre box, no matter what the label.) Nowadays you might make a case for R. Kelly or Bobby Brown, maybe even rap/soul artists like Puff Diddy or whatever the fuck he's called these days, but it's just not the same. There's nothing like the male-fronted soul music of the 50s, 60s and 70s, when a macho black dude put every fiber of his being into pleading for his baby to come back over a funky groove played by real musicians on guitar, horns, drums and keys, and suffered no loss of masculine face. Titans like Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Al Green blazed across the firmament like comets, their tails leaving slashes of luminosity on the night sky above the clubs, car radios and couches that become the recipients of the magic these artists conjure. But Redding, Gaye and Green are merely the tip of the iceberg; there were&and are&hundreds of soul men spread across the history of popular music, some well-known, some not so much; some with hits that dominate oldies radio, others whose influence is felt more than heard. Lately, a spate of reissues has paid tribute to those demigods and minor angels.

According to the liner notes of Soul Alive!, a double-live album originally released in 1983, Solomon Burke pretty much kept Atlantic Records alive in the early 60s with hits like "Just Out of Reach (of My Two Empty Arms)" and "Cry to Me." (The Drifters and Ben E. King might have something to say about that, but never mind.) By the time Atlantic was distributing Stax Records and recording Aretha Franklin in the mid-60s, Burke's star was fading. But his talents never diminished, and he still commanded a loyal following, as evidenced by the rabid Washington, D.C. crowd on these recordings. Burke brings his religious expertise (he's a minister as well as an entertainer) to bear on these performances, serving as preacher and philosophizer as much as singer and bandleader. Presenting his hits as a series of long, bluesy medleys, Burke gives his powerhouse voice a workout, crying, crooning, screaming and generally running through every trick, technique and nuance in the soul singer book. He not only blesses the crowd with "Cry to Me," "Just Out of Reach" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love," but also puts the King Solomon spin on Don Gibson's "I Can't Stop Loving You," Sam Cooke's "Having a Party" (interpolated with the gospel standard "Amen," the secular/spiritual combination of which is a summation of the Burke style if there ever was one) and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary," given a reading not unlike that of Ike and Tina Turner. Backed by the overtly bluesy drive of the Realtones (featuring a young Marc Ribot, before his reign as king of skronk in the NYC jazz and rock underground), Burke maintains his dignity while driving the crowd into a frenzy. At two disks, Soul Alive! is a whole lotta Solomon and may be too much for the uninitiated, but longtime fans will be happy to replace their worn-out vinyl with this shiny new digital display. (more)

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