ALBUM REVIEW: Kenny Neal Brings Family and Friends into the Blend on ‘Straight From the Heart’
Grant Britt
Posted On May 20, 2022
When you’re one of 11 children, you gotta do something to stand out. Kenny Neal chose music, picking up instruments he found lying around his Baton Rouge, Louisiana, household. Dad Raful was a prominent blues harpist heavily influenced by Chicago blues icon Little Walter. By the time he was 17, Kenny had enough experience sitting in with his dad’s band whenever he needed a guitarist or bassist to be hired on as Buddy Guy’s bassist. He put together the Neal Brothers Blues Band with his siblings and signed on with Canadian blues powerhouse Downchild in the early 1980s as singer/guitarist before launching a solo career.
Photo by Laura Carbone
Neal’s latest, Straight From the Heart, is still a family affair, with brother Darnell on bass on most of the cuts and daughter Syreeta helping out on vocals on “Two Timing” with Tito Jackson. That’d be brother of the white-gloved one, the Jackson 5 Tito vocalizing on his own composition, a hoodoo blues worthy of Dr. John that Neal lights up with some searing guitar.
Neal has some high-profile locals as guests, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters, but his own guitar, harp, and vocal work are the stars of this showcase. Recorded at his home studio in Baton Rouge, the project has a swampy feel with some big city Chicago-style blues stirred in.
Neal and Ingram’s sizzling shared guitar leads honor B.B. on the King-ly tribute “Mount Up on the Wings of the King.” Neal pays tribute to another King on “I’ll Play the Blues for You, honoring Albert’s 1972 Stax masterpiece, the brass section replicating the classic Memphis Horns soul sound that defined the label.
Neal brings in family once again on his dad’s tune, “It’s Been So Long,” classic swamp pop in the Fats Domino mode, with Kenny contributing a great Slim Harpo-inspired solo.
He whips up another swamp popper on the Dopsie Jr.-accordion-dominated “Louise Ana,” matching Dopsie’s frenetic, melancholy squeezings with some mournful harp. “Bon Temps Rouler” sounds just like its title says it should, a rollicking, sweat-bustin’-out-all-over, good-time zydeco throwdown.
Kenny Neal is the real deal. If this one don’t get you up and moving, you might as well lie back and let ’em throw dirt in your face.
Straight From the Heart is out May 20 on Ruf Records.
