The Cure For the Midsummer Blues Is A Joyous Soul “Reckoning”

Here’s a tasty recipe sure to cure the midsummer blues:  take a veteran East Coast soul singer, Billy Price, send him out to the West Coast to record at the hottest blues studio, and recording kitchen, Greaseland, add a world class session player and legendary bassist, Jerry Jemmott, and toss in some of the West Coast’s finest blues musicians including Alex Pettersen and Jim Pugh, stir it all together under the able production and supervision of the studio’s owner, guitarist co-producer, and head chef, Kid Andersen and the end result is?   The longest run-on sentence? Well that, but also a gem of a record that is nothing short of a joyous “Reckoning”.

Unless you follow the blues/soul circuit or from either Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh to be specific, or the Baltimore/D.C. metropolitan area, you may be unfamiliar with the long and storied career of William Pollak aka Billy Price.  Price first came to national prominence as the singer for arguably the world’s greatest guitarist, Roy Buchanan and was a key ingredient in making his 1974 live album Live Stock, one of Roy’s most realized and satisfying work.  If you are a Roy Buchanan fan you must get the just released recording of the entire Town Hall performances.  The fine folks at Real Gone Music have done a beautiful job on the 2 cd Roy Buchanan Live at Town Hall 1974 and the liner notes alone are worth the price of admission.

After his work with Buchanan, Price returned to Pittsburg where he formed Billy Price and the Keystone Rythym Band and most recently the Billy Price Band.  Recording 15 albums over the last 39 years, a discography that would make any major label artist proud, but when you consider it was compiled by an independent artist makes it all the more remarkable.  Price’s discography is a study in good taste and professional execution drawing upon the best material in American blues, soul and funk.  So when Mr. Price tells me that his latest rercording is “…the best in my career…” you pay attention because that is saying alot.  In 2015 Price and his mentor Otis Clay released the phenominal “This Time For Real” which earned them the Blues Music Award for Best Soul Blues album.  In a somewhat circuitous way, it was while attending the Blues Music Awards in 2016 that the seeds for the latest project were sown.

Also receiving a Blues Music Award that day  was Curtis Salgado.  “I have so much respect for Curtis”, Price told me. “…he won an award for soul-blues singer of the year in Memphis a couple of years ago, and the eloquence and humility in his acceptance speech was extraordinary, paying appropriate homage to the other artists who were nominated in the category. I also saw his live show in Las Vegas last year at a festival I was on and was completely blown away by him”.

Price went on “In fact, his show made such an impression on me that it motivated me to talk in Vegas to his producer, Tony Braunagel, about possibly working together in the future.”

“In the meantime, Kid (Andersen), the Norwegian wunderkind, had begun an intense courtship to bring me out to Greaseland in San Jose”  Price recalled.

(author:  For those of you unfamiliar with the “Kid”, Andersen, a long-time member of Rick Estrin’s Nightcats, and has a back story of how he got into the music business that is almost on level with NRBQ’s Tom Ardolino as far as sounding like some kind of Hollywood fairy tale.  Along with his Nightcat’s bandmate Alex Pettersen, Andersen and Pettersen were just a couple of huge blues fans growing up in Norway who dreamed of one day getting to America for a chance to see real American idols perform live and eventually immigrated to the U.S. and realized their dream of playing blues professionally in America.)

“One of the perks he dangled was his ability to include Jim Pugh and Jerry Jemmott in the rhythm section… So the decision wasn’t hard. My time out there along with the months of planning, writing, and song selection, was one of the best musical experiences of my life. You will hear the results” Price told me.

I have to admit Price was right.  I have had “Reckoning” for going on six weeks now and I love this record.  The album opens to the swirling strains of Jim Pugh’s B3 organ and Pettersen’s drumming on the excellent “39 Steps”.  Written by Billy Price Band keyboardist and collaborator Jimmy Britton, this is top notch songwriting. “39 Steps” tells the story from the groom’s perspective as he is walking down the aisle at his wedding thinking he’s found his life mate and their new life together will be heaven but all too soon he realizes he has made a big mistake as it turns into a living hell. The song is a mental check list of the protagonist planning his getaway all the while counting the steps to his freedom in a call and response with the background singers.

The strong opening track is followed by a Jerry Zarambe song, “Dreamer”, first recorded by Bobby “Blue ” Bland in 1974 and later in 2011 by Etta James from her album with the same title.  Price’s version of “Dreamer”steers closer to the Bobby Bland version with the Fenton Robinson like delivery.  An excellent change up with the moody slow burn of “Dreamer “setting up the title track, “Reckoning”.

“Reckoning” is a William “Billy T” Trobiani song that was title track on the Billy T Band 2016 cd.  Trobiana is a NYC born bass player who moved to Norway where he led the house band at Oslo’s “Muddy Waters” blues club.  “Billy T”, as he is known in Norway, earned a reputation for his blues/soul songwriting talents as well as providing authentic back up to touring U.S. blues artists who played Oslo. If you were a budding blues musician in Norway, “Muddy Waters” was the place to be so it is no surprise that 2 of the young Norwegian bluesman he mentored and inspired were none other than Greaseland’s owner and co-producer of this project Kid Andersen and drummer Alex Pettersen.  “Reckoning” is the perfect vehicle for Price’s vocals and the studio band nails it with a killer performance.  Listening and watching the video of Billy Price recording “Reckoning ” at Greaseland Studios that accompanies this article still gives me goosebumps.  The material and performances are equally strong and to watch it as it goes down is just too cool.  But wait, this album is just getting started.

I asked Price how he came to choosing a J.J. Cale track for the project.  Price said:  “The JJ Cale tune wasn’t my idea, it was Kid’s. It was one of the songs on the list for the album Kid produced for Tommy Castro on Alligator, but for some reason it never made the final cut on that album. Kid likes the song and suggested it for mine. I raised it up an octave from where JJ and Tommy had it and suggested that we give it a “Can’t Turn You Loose” romper-stomper treatment. So we did”.  Kudos to Andersen for the suggestion because it fits perfectly as the follow up to “Reckoning” and set up to the Otis Redding song penned by the great Eddie Floyd and Booker T, “I Love You More Than Words Can Say”.

Being a huge admirer of Eddie Floyd both as a musician and the person, I asked Billy Price about his inclusion of this “Eddie Floyd song”, as I referred to it in my semi-ignorance.   Ever the patient gentleman, Price politely pointed out:  “The Eddie Floyd composition is an Otis Redding ballad, so I think of it as an Otis song and not an Eddie song.”  Price then adds with his characteristic good humored honesty:  “It takes tremendous chutzpah to cover an Otis Redding ballad, don’t you think?”  That comment brought a huge grin to my face due to the slightly veiled reference to Eddie Hinton the late great songwriter and session man who fearlessly covered his idol, Otis Redding’s songs and whom Price and I both greatly admire.  I often say that Price’s cover of Hinton’s “Dangerous Highway” off of Price’s “Soul Collection” album with the Keystone Rhythm Band is the best version of that Hinton classis, after Eddie’s original of course.

The next track is that shot of sugar sweet soul that is a hallmark of all of Price’s records and this one fits the bill perfectly, a cover of Price’s good friend and sometimes collaborator, Johnny Rawls’ “I Keep Holding On”.  Exquisite ear candy.  Nuf said.

The midway point of the record is an original by Price himself co-written with Billy Price Band pianist Jim Britton.  Like the albums opening track, Britton’s “39 Steps”, this is first class songwriting but in an entirely different genre.  A late night, mid-summer soul, make out song ala Marvin Gaye is how I would describe it and is the perfect song to come down off of the sugar sweet rush of “I Keep Holding On”.

Time to turn up the tempo with “Get Your Lie Straight”.  Being a Denise LaSalle fan, I inquired about this track and Price generously shared credit for the idea behind the song’s selection and his encyclopedic knowledge of soul music with me:  “…Similarly with the Denise composition, I think of it as a Bill Coday song not a Denise LaSalle song, although Denise did record it several years after Bill Coday did. That one was a recommendation from Kid’s bandleader and mentor, and my friend, Rick Estrin. Rick has great taste and doing that song was a great idea”.   Estrin has had the golden touch of late, coming off his recent and well-deserved Blues Music Award and his suggestion here was just another example.

Balancing out the covers to originals ratio on the album are two more Price originals co-written this time with long-time collaborator and guitarist Fred Chapelier on “Never Be Fooled Again” and on one for the lawyers, “Expert Witness”, which also shares writing credits with the increasingly impressive Jim Britton along with Chapelier.

Rounding out this soul party are “Love Ballad” originally done by the funk group L.T.D.  who had a minor hit with it in 1976 and “Synthetic World” by Swamp Dogg, a long time Price favorite.  Listen to how much fun everyone is having playing these old soul favorites, especially Jerry Jemmott’s propulsive bass on “Synthetic World” and you can see why artists are flocking to Greaseland Studios.

The disc closes as strong as it starts with a stellar rendering of Muscle Shoal’s Mark Narmore and Andreas Werner’s “Your Love Stays With Me”.  This track is one of my favorites on the album with special recognition going out to the horn section of Johnny Bones, Nancy Wright and Konstantis Jemel Janovs.   I would also be remiss if I failed to mention the incredible group of background singers who played on various tracks throughout the album including Courtney Knott, Lisa Leuschner Andersen, the great Rusty Zinn, Sons of the Soul Revivers and Robby Yamilov.

Final kudos goes out to Mary Bianchi who has done another superb job with the cd’s sleeve  and disc art.  Combining the intimate photography of David Aschkenas and William Henderson with Hyla Willis’ graphic design work, Bianchi has turned out a final product that is as pleasing to the eyes as it is to the ears.

Treat yourself to a copy of “Reckoning” by Billy Price and the folks at Greaseland Studios for a guaranteed cure for the midsummer blues.