Latimore - A Taste of Me: Great American Songs (2017)

For his latest release, A Taste Of Me: Great American Songs, Latimore has truly come full circle. He has reunited with producers Ish Ledesma and Steve Alaimo, not to recreate the past - but to create something modern that still remains relevant to who Latimore is as an artist. Nothing reveals a great songwriter's soul than the music that influences them the most. Choosing material from the Great American Songbook, Latimore asserts his own unique take on some timeless songs, including two of his own, and manages to make them all sound brand new. Much of the credit must go to producer Ish Ledesma, who has assembled a top-notch, compact studio band that absolutely nails every track, allowing Latimore the latitude (pun intended) to navigate the tunes to the best of his ability. Adding to this mix are the Albert Brothers, two of the best mixing engineers/producers on the planet. Ron and Howard Albert, best known for their awesome body of work on recordings at the famed Criteria Studios in Miami, have recorded or produced classic albums from such artists as The Eagles, The Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Aretha Franklin, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Derek and the Dominoes, the Allman Brothers Band, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, Joe Cocker, and many others. One of the revolutionary achievements the brothers are best known for is their creation of the "Fat Albert" drum sound, by individually adding a separate microphone to each part of a drum kit. Because of the compact band and the sparse arrangements on the new album, Latimore's voice is front and center - and by making that aspect the main focus is perhaps why this record sounds so intimate, so warm and so real. Couple that with the fact that Latimore's rich matured voice sounds wiser than ever. It is especially poignant that the album contains the classic tune "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know," written by Al Kooper - for Al was the one who produced and wrote the very first single from the first full-length Latimore album way back when. And so, with this new album, one can say that the circle is now complete. Let's hope there's many more like this one to follow.