Q: She's 16 and British, what can she possibly know about singing vintage American soul music? A: Enough to make you squirm, get off your ass, and dance close with anybody who'll have you.
Joss Stone is a young woman who, if you believe the story, was about to record her wannabe pop smash debut and then be well on her way to becoming the next
Britney/
Christina. Then she heard some vintage American Miami soul made by the likes of
Latimore,
Little Beaver,
Betty Wright,
Timmy Thomas, and the like, and genuine inspiration took hold. The result of all this career changing (or diva postponement) is
The Soul Sessions, a collection of ten badass soul classics recorded with all of the above folks -- soul princess
Betty Wright and S-Curve's
Steve Greenberg produced almost all of it in Miami, though a pair of tracks were recorded in New York with R&B wunderkind
Mike Mangini and a souled-out cover of
the White Stripes "Fell in Love With a Boy," guided by
the Roots' ?uestlove (Ahmir Thompson) on the modern tip, was cut in Philly. These jams drip honey sweet and hard with tough, sexy soul, and
Stone's voice is larger than life. It's true she's been tutored and mentored by
Wright and her musical collaborators in the science of groove, but she keeps it raw enough to be real. Her reading of
Harlan Howard's "The Chokin' Kind" reveals that it should have been an R&B tune all along -- check out
Little Beaver's (
Willie Hale) guitar solo. Her reading of
Bobby Miller's "Dirty Man," a track associated with
Wright, is gutsy and completely believable, and the interplay between
Latimore's piano and
Beaver's funky, shimmering guitaristry brings
Stone's vocal down to street level.
For a woman as young as
Stone to tackle
Carla Thomas' "I've Fallen in Love With You" and
Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses," not to mention
John Ellison's nugget "Some Kind of Wonderful," takes guts, chops, or a genuine delusional personality to pull off.
Stone has the former two. She has unique phrasing and a huge voice that accents, dips, and slips, never overworking a song or trying to bring attention to itself via hollow acrobatics. The strings and funky backbeat provided by Thompson on "I've Fallen in Love With You" are chilling in the way they prod
Stone to just spill a need out of her heart that one would believe would be beyond her years. And speaking of Thompson, his production of
the Stripes tune is more than remarkable; it conveys
Jack White's intent but in an entirely new language. The set closes with
Stone's radical reread of
the Isleys' "For the Love of You," a daunting and audacious task. The way she tackles this song, prodded only by
Angelo Morris' keyboard whispering alongside her, is far from reverential, but it is true, accurate, moving, and stunningly -- even heartbreakingly -- beautiful. This is a debut that, along with those fine practitioners in the nu-soul underground such as
Peven Everett,
Julie Dexter, Yas-rah,
Fertile Ground, and a few others, is solid proof that soul is alive and well. And perhaps, given her youth and stunning looks, the perverse star-making machinery will use this unusual entry into the marketplace to reinvestigate the wonders of timeless depth and vision inherent in soul and R&B that are far from exhausted, as this record so convincingly proves. ~ Thom Jurek