Joe Barr With Breezy Rodio - Soul For The Heart (2021)

Joe Barr comes straight from the smoky back rooms of Chicago, where the musical identity of the city. In the ranks of the obscure (and deserving) soldiers who animate, night after night, the urban nights, this pianist and vehement singer resides at the Kingston Mine (famous club in the North of the Windy City) with his Soul Purpose Band. For his part, the young guitarist Breezy Rodio officiates every Tuesday at the Blues Chicago (on Clark Street), within the Linsey Alexander Blues Band. Cultivating a reciprocal admiration (and having already united their talents on stage), these brilliant musicians are now going through the studio, for a common first album with an explicit title.Supported by organist Chris Foreman (of the Blues Organ Trio) at Hammond B3 and a solid vintage brass section, they dispense an irresistible blend of vintage soul, unrolling a panel of golden covers on edges, as well as on a groovy rhythm. infallible. It takes, indeed, the nerve, the trunk and the know-how, to start the festivities by resuming the “Drown In My Own Tears” of the great Ray Charles. And from the outset, Joe's unstoppable performance (both in terms of patter and expressiveness) wins support. His adaptations of the fiery “A Woman Was Made To Be Loved” by Tyrone Davis, as well as those, immaculate, of “Try Me Tonight”, “We Are Getting Careless With Our Love” and “I Believe In You” by Johnny Taylor are a good illustration of the register favored by middle-aged regulars at his headquarters.Foreman's organ works wonders, as does Garland Green's “Jealous Kind Of Fellow” (with early O'Jays-style background vocals), while in the spirit“Less is more”from giants such as Steve Cropper and Jimmy Nolen, Breezy Rodio's guitar operates in the conciseness that befits true spadassins. Carried by brass and a piano with small onions, the sublime “Ain't Nothing You Can Do” by Bobby Bland (already transcended in its time by an ecstatic Van Morrison) here resumes its youthful complexion, by the grace of 'a Joe Barr displaying all the range of his emotions, as well as that of a Breezy Rodio with imperial licks. Concluding with the unstoppable three-of-a-kind of BB King's “To Know You is To Love You” (Rodio shaking himself there as on Beale Street) and the tender “My Latest My Greatest Inspiration” by Teddy Pendergrass and “I Need To Belong (To Someone) ”by one of the tenors of Chicago Soul, Jerry Butler, here is a soul record as unexpected as it is timeless,and as expansive as it is delicately manly. ~Patrick Dallongeville