Boz Scaggs is one of the greatest white soul men. Endowed with a distinctive silk-lined voice, he has navigated the waters of blues, country, jazz and quality disco with ineffable cool and a pretty consistent hit rate. Memphis, his first album in five years, is a return to the music of the South – in some ways a homage to Al Green - after a couple of gently impressive jazz releases in which he showed he could master the standards canon with delicacy and ease.
The new CD was made with a cast of studio superstars: Ray Parker Jr plays guitar with a deft combination of minimal intervention and maximum emotional finesse. Willie Weeks is the bass player to whom you turn when you want effortless rhythm delivered with imagination and grace. Steve Jordan, the album's producer, is a relaxed drummer who keeps time with discretion and cool. And keyboard player Spooner Oldham is one of those Memphis studio veterans who has seen it all, never pumping that Hammond B-3 organ more than just enough to warm the heart and put a gentle swell into the ultra-smooth stew.
In his best albums from the last couple of decades, Some Change and Dig, Scaggs managed the potentially deadening vehicle of a perfect studio band flawlessly. These two releases were inspired explorations of jazz-inflected R & B, each track possessed of a separate identity and the technical virtuosity of the assembled players always at the service of the singer’s heartfelt vocals. These are classic records that still bear listening to time after time. There are moments of equal brilliance on Memphis – an irresistibly seductive version of “Corrina, Corrina”, “You Got me Cryin’” a slow blues in which the emotion burns steadily with a tangible sense of the darkness at the core of all pain, and the swift moving “Cadillac Walk”. Much of the rest of the album rarely rises above a well-lubricated precision that tips occasionally into the greyness of bland. But for Scaggs fans and those who haven’t got the bug yet, Memphis is worth hearing for those tracks alone when he delivers once again something close to perfection.
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