JOSS STONE
''THE SOUL SESSIONS''
SEP 2003
42:06
RALENTLESS
1/The Chokin' Kind
Harlan Howard/3:36
2/Super Duper Love (Are You Diggin' on Me?), Pt. 1
Willie Garner4:20
3/Fell in Love With a Boy
Jack White/3:38
4/Victim of a Foolish Heart
Charles Buckins / George Jackson/5:31
5/Dirty Man
Bobby Miller/2:59
6/Some Kind of Wonderful
John Ellison / Gerry Goffin / Carole King/3:56
7/I've Fallen in Love With You
Carla Thomas/4:29
8/I Had a Dream
Isaac Hayes / David Porter / John Sebastian/3:01
9/All the King's Horses
Allan Felder / Norman Harris/3:03
10/For the Love of You, Pts. 1 & 2
Ernest Isley / Kelly Isley / Marvin Isley / Ronald Isley / Rudolph Isley / Christopher Jasper/7:33
?uestlove /Drums, Guest Artist, Producer
John R. Angier /String Arrangements
Cindy Blackman /Bass, Drums
Adam Blackstone /Bass
Deanna Carroll /Vocals (Background)
Marc Ciprut /Guitar
Jack Daley /Bass
Pierre Daniel /Keyboards
Kirk Douglass /Guitar
Karen Dreyfus /Viola
Taneka Duggan /Vocals (Background)
Jimmy Farkus /Guitar
Sam Furnace /Saxophone
Steve Greenwell /Bass
Willie "Beaver" Hale /Guitar
Dawn Hannay /Viola
Kamal /Keyboards
Lisa Kim /Violin
Myung Hi Kim /Violin
Sarah Kim /Violin
Soohyun Kwon /Violin
Benny Latimore /Piano
Liza Lim /Violin
Mike Mangini /Producer, Tambourine
Namphuyo Aisha McCray /Vocals (Background)
Angelo Morris /Guitar, Guitar (Acoustic)
Ignacio Nunez /Percussion
Sharon Park /Violin
James Poyser /Keyboards
Robert Rienhart /Viola
Tom Rosenfeld /Viola
Laura Seaton /Violin
Sarah Seiver /Cello
Rob Shaw /Violin
Fiona Simon /Violin
Alan Stepansky /Cello
Angie Stone /Guest Artist, Vocals (Background)
Jenny Strenger /Violin
Timmy Thomas /Organ
Betty Wright /Guest Artist, Producer, Vocals (Background)
Jeanette Wright /Vocals (Background)
Sharon Yamada /Violin
Jung Sun Yoo /Violin
REVIEW
by Thom Jurek
Q: She's 16 and British, what can she possibly know about singing vintage American soul music? A: Enough to make you squirm, get off your ass, and dance close with anybody who'll have you. Joss Stone is a young woman who, if you believe the story, was about to record her wannabe pop smash debut and then be well on her way to becoming the next Britney/Christina. Then she heard some vintage American Miami soul made by the likes of Latimore, Little Beaver, Betty Wright, Timmy Thomas, and the like, and genuine inspiration took hold. The result of all this career changing (or diva postponement) is The Soul Sessions, a collection of ten badass soul classics recorded with all of the above folks -- soul princess Betty Wright and S-Curve's Steve Greenberg produced almost all of it in Miami, though a pair of tracks were recorded in New York with R&B wunderkind Mike Mangini and a souled-out cover of the White Stripes "Fell in Love With a Boy," guided by the Roots' ?uestlove (Ahmir Thompson) on the modern tip, was cut in Philly. These jams drip honey sweet and hard with tough, sexy soul, and Stone's voice is larger than life. It's true she's been tutored and mentored by Wright and her musical collaborators in the science of groove, but she keeps it raw enough to be real. Her reading of Harlan Howard's "The Chokin' Kind" reveals that it should have been an R&B tune all along -- check out Little Beaver's (Willie Hale) guitar solo. Her reading of Bobby Miller's "Dirty Man," a track associated with Wright, is gutsy and completely believable, and the interplay between Latimore's piano and Beaver's funky, shimmering guitaristry brings Stone's vocal down to street level.
For a woman as young as Stone to tackle Carla Thomas' "I've Fallen in Love With You" and Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses," not to mention John Ellison's nugget "Some Kind of Wonderful," takes guts, chops, or a genuine delusional personality to pull off. Stone has the former two. She has unique phrasing and a huge voice that accents, dips, and slips, never overworking a song or trying to bring attention to itself via hollow acrobatics. The strings and funky backbeat provided by Thompson on "I've Fallen in Love With You" are chilling in the way they prod Stone to just spill a need out of her heart that one would believe would be beyond her years. And speaking of Thompson, his production of the Stripes tune is more than remarkable; it conveys Jack White's intent but in an entirely new language. The set closes with Stone's radical reread of the Isleys' "For the Love of You," a daunting and audacious task. The way she tackles this song, prodded only by Angelo Morris' keyboard whispering alongside her, is far from reverential, but it is true, accurate, moving, and stunningly -- even heartbreakingly -- beautiful. This is a debut that, along with those fine practitioners in the nu-soul underground such as Peven Everett, Julie Dexter, Yas-rah, Fertile Ground, and a few others, is solid proof that soul is alive and well. And perhaps, given her youth and stunning looks, the perverse star-making machinery will use this unusual entry into the marketplace to reinvestigate the wonders of timeless depth and vision inherent in soul and R&B that are far from exhausted, as this record so convincingly proves.