Solomon Burke

If you're a songwriter and one day the phone rings and somebody tells you soul giant
Solomon Burke is recording again and looking for songs, you really have only one option:
Get busy. Even if you're Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello or Tom Waits. Burke is the rare singer
who makes songwriters sound wise beyond their words -- he finds ache lying dormant in
unlikely places and manages to pinpoint, with GPS accuracy, the murky emotion... More >

The latest Old Person to forge Honest Music in the teeth of a Youth-Orientated Marketplace has lost his legendary voice, so what's the attraction? An egomaniac's deep insight into the human heart? A fat man's heartwarming ability to ambulate to his throne? Or just New Songs by such Respected Veterans as Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Van Morrison, Brian Wilson, Dan Penn, and Bob Dylan--whose praise of himself as a dance musician I'd love to hear him do himself, proving that Burke would have butchered the thing even if he could still sing? (Grade: B-)