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4/14/2004

Fred Mills

It's ironic how with the recent upswing in interest in all things soul — Grammy winner Alicia Keys, upstart newcomer Joss Stone, the Rev. Al Green's unexpected return to the secular music world, the Standing In The Shadows Of Motown film about the Funk Brothers — the record industry, in its urban/hip-hop conditioned mindset, still thinks of soul strictly along reissue lines. So does that make the debut album from Memphis funkateers the Bo-Keys a lost cause before it even leaves the gate? Hardly, particularly if you consider the mojo that's working here: musical veterans who've played with Isaac Hayes, the Isley Brothers, the Bar-Kays, Al Green and Bobby “Blue” Bland, recording at the legendary Royal Studios (operated by Willie Mitchell, producer to Green, Syl Johnson, O.V. Wright and scores more). Musically, these cats are on, from opening track “Coming Home Baby” (powered by slinky Hammond organ come-ons, “Shaft”-esque wah-wah guitar and strutting horn charts, it sounds like a lowrider cruising scene from a vintage blaxploitation flick) through a rowdy cover of Jimmy Smith's “Back To The Chicken Shack” to closing tune “Bling Bling” which has naught to do with the hip-hop notion of bling and everything to do with the musical wealth you might accumulate on a road trip from Memphis to New Orleans. The Royal Sessions, incidentally, is a mostly instrumental affair save for some funky-good-time extemporaneous outbursts here and there (including the actual lines “let's have a funky good time, y'all!” dropped into James Brown's “Doin' It To Death”). Serving things up sleek ‘n' greasy, the Bo-Keys are at once contemporary feeling in their vitality (several of the players are relatively young, in fact) but still manage to sound utterly old-school. As Stax-Volt as they wanna be.