Review: Memphis Royal Brothers – Memphis Royal Brothers
Memphis Royal Brothers – Memphis Royal Brothers
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Royal Records
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
Memphis, Tennessee, is the cradle of southern music history. That’s where the Mississippi blues, rhythm & blues, soul and country came together. Following a TV documentary about the Memphis legacy, songwriter Gary Bolen and producers Richard Bolen and Boo Mitchell, son of legendary Memphis producer Willie Mitchell, decided to invite a number of Memphis-based greats to play an album under the flag of Memphis Royal Brothers. Supplemented by a band of Memphis-based younger musicians, the Memphis ‘royalty’ sprang into action.
The album opens with the rhythm & blues shuffle Good God I Got The Blues, sung by the now 90(!)-year-old Memphis legend Bobby Rush, after which harmonica great Charlie Musselwhite and country singer Jim Lauderdale take charge. Goin’ South is a sultry blues song with beautiful organ playing by another Memphis legend Rev. Charles Hodges, and in the country-like Brand New Heart Lauderdale and singer Wendy Moten shine in a beautiful duet, supported by Musselwhite’s blues harp and Luther Dickinson’s (North Mississippi All Stars) guitar. Ready To Rise is a country ballad that evolves into intense Memphis Soul, fabulously well sung by Wendy Moten and with a great horn section led by Marc Franklin.
The second part of the album is sung by soul vocalist Marcus Scott (Tower Of Power) and that produces four cracking Memphis Soul hits. The horn section shines in Hot Night In June and What Mothers Do, in which Luther Dickinson plays beautiful slide guitar and the album ends with the country classic I Fall To Pieces, once sung in the charts by Patsy Cline. The song does indeed start as a country classic but evolves into a cracking Memphis Soul performance.
On Memphis Royal Brothers, the Memphis ‘royalty’ pays a beautiful tribute to the musical Memphis sound.
Tracks:
01. Good God I Got The Blues
02. Goin’ South
03. Brand New Heart
04. Ready To Rise
05. Gimme Back The Keys To My Cadillac
06. Hot Night In June
07. What Mothers Do
08. I Fall To Pieces
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