Howard Tate – Rediscovered

It’s been a hell of a year for soul/R&B comebacks. First came Bettye Lavette, with her understated marvel A Woman Like Me, a testament not just to the blues as lived, but to the virtues of collaboration — in this case, with Robert Cray career-maker Dennis Walker. Now there’s Howard Tate, a singer as visceral and thrilling as Jackie Wilson or Al Green who’s been MIA for nearly three decades.

Tate, whose octave-leaping “aaah” makes straight for the solar plexus, was given up for dead in the liner notes to the 1995 reissue of Get It While You Can. That record, his monumental debut for Verve in 1966, served as a touchstone for the likes of B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. (Janis cherry-picked the album’s testifying title track, among other compositions by producer-writer Jerry Ragavoy.)

Tate’s self-titled album from 1972 found him reuniting with Ragavoy after a making a middling record with soul singers-turned-producers Lloyd Price and Johnny Nash; nearly as sublime as Get It, the record’s juking cover of The Band’s “Jemima Surrender” is not to be missed. Tate then suffered a series of business and personal setbacks, including the loss of his adolescent daughter in a house fire, before descending into addiction and homelessness. He wasn’t heard from again until 1994, when Philly soul singer Ron Kennedy bumped into Tate, who was then off drugs and the streets and working as an itinerant preacher, in a supermarket in New Jersey.

Rediscovered, another collaboration between Tate and Ragavoy, would be a signal achievement if only for being a first-rate contemporary soul record; from its pressing rhythms and punchy horns to its stinging guitar fills and the gospel-steeped background vocals of Lola Gulley, the album reanimates rather than reifies tradition. And Tate’s tenor, which, if anything, has gained in depth and resonance over the years, is as limber and emotive as ever, whether he’s stepping out on “Organic Love (100% Natural)”, baring his soul on the lovelorn “Sorry Wrong Number”, or turning the come-on of Prince’s “Kiss” into a plea for intimacy and commitment.

Ultimately, though, it’s as a witness to the possibility of spiritual and emotional renewal that Rediscovered achieves its measure of transcendence. “Anything that makes me feel so good/Oh, that’s just got to be/Aaah! I can’t help myself,” sings Tate, at a loss for words but little else, to the undulating soul shuffle of “All I Know Is The Way I Feel”.

“I can’t help myself,” he repeats, riding the groove, “it’s the way I feel.”