Southern Soul Blues

On the chitlin’ circuit that’s still going strong throughout the South, the blues isn’t some museum piece — it’s music in motion. The stars of soul blues shake it up with some hot and heavy R&B grooves and a heaping helping of S-E-X, and get down with it. Soul-blues godfather Bobby Womack starting laying the groundwork back in the ’70s with hits like “That’s the Way I Feel About ‘Cha,” which sound like they could slide right off the record and underneath a set of silk sheets. In the ’80s, Little Milton gave the sound its own National Anthem with “The Blues Is Alright,” letting everybody in earshot know the blues ain’t nothin’ but a party. A little later, midnight movers Marvin Sease and Bobby Rush started sexing things up on tracks like Marvin’s sweet-toothed smash “Candy Licker” and Rush’s chicken-pickin’ “Hen Pecked,” and a new brand of blues was born.

Soul blues settles into a nice ’n’ naughty groove, in Next Steps.

Southern soul blues is all about what happens between a man and woman behind closed doors, but it all comes out in the open when the stars of the chitlin’ circuit start slingin’ their steamy stories around. On “I’ll Drink Your Bathwater Baby,” Ollie Nightingale puts all his cards on the table, letting his lady know there’s no bridge he won’t cross to keep her on the other side of the bed. Lee Shot Williams takes that idea even further, making a meal out of it on the hungry-for-your-love “I’m a Nibble Man.” Denise LaSalle speaks up for the sisters, and when she starts asking for some “Snap, Crackle and Pop,” you can bet she’s not talking about breakfast cereal.

Southern soul-blues ladies lay it down in Deep Cuts.

Just because Southern soul-blues singers like to get down and dirty, that doesn’t mean there’s a “gentlemen only” sign on the door. There are lots of ladies who lay it down in no uncertain terms. Denise LaSalle is the original queen of the scene, and when she says, “Don’t Jump My Pony,” the boys had better be sure they saddle up and ride right. Soul blues has as much cheatin’ going on as classic country; consider Peggy Scott-Adams — if she can’t find a man who’ll stick and stay, she’ll settle for “Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong.” And Sheba Potts-Wright takes a tongue-in-cheek turn, telling guys without any green to get lost, when she follows “I Can Hear Your Macaroni” with “but I don’t see no cheese!”

Like whiskey and wings, Southern soul blues is a tangy mix. Stripped-down, grown-up, it’s party music for adults only — folks who still know what to do with a Saturday night. The domain of down-home godfathers Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Bland, and Z.Z. Hill, and kings-on-the-climb like Mel Waiters and Sir Charles Jones, soul blues isn’t about bling and boasts. It’s about truth-tellin’, tongue-in-cheek tales of men done wrong and the women they just can’t quit — or vice versa. In other words, it does just what both soul and the blues were born to do. And we’ve worked up the sauciest, sassiest mix of tunes from the kings and queens of the chitlin’ circuit, so you can feel like you’re right there in the club with them without even leaving your seat.