Frankie Miller - Dancing In The Rain (1993) CD-Rip

British blue-eyed soul man Frankie Miller had a great voice, a strong knack as a songwriter, and some pretty unfortunate luck with producers and arrangers. While he cut some solid sides with Brinsley Schwarz as his backing band and did even better work in the company of the legendary Allen Toussaint, the sad truth is there are as many duds as gems in his catalog, usually due to mismatched assistance in the studio. 1985's Dancing in the Rain paired Miller with producer and engineer John Jansen, who tricked him up with a morass of hard rock guitars, high-mixed drums, and periodic sax honks that suggest Jansen was hoping to turn Miller into the next Robert Palmer, since on the surface this album resembles Palmer's "Addicted to Love" era and Power Station hits more than anything else. The production dates Dancing in the Rain more effectively than anything Miller cut in the 1970s, but Miller manages to survive the onslaught without embarrassing himself -- Miller sounds tough, committed, and in control on these sides, especially the mournful "Gladly Go Blind," the swaggering "I'd Lie to You for Your Love," and the passionate "You're a Puzzle I Can't Put Down." Miller wrote or co-wrote all ten songs on the album (his collaborators include Brill Building legend Jeff Barry and Parliament-Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel), and while "The Boys and Girls Are Doing It" and "Do It Till We Drop" are obvious throwaways, most of the other tunes are solid and give him plenty of room to show off his vocal chops. Dancing in the Rain was Frankie Miller's last album before a severe brain hemorrhage sidelined his performing career in 1994; he certainly deserved to go out with a better record, but for the most part the album's flaws have little to do with him.