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![]() Marcia Ball, Irma Thomas, and Tracy Nelson mix it up By Clea Simon JANUARY 20, 1998: Have you ever had a peanut-butter-strawberry-and-caramel-fudge sundae? More than once? Of course not, because once you're older than about eight, such a blending of flavors -- even of tastes that qualify as both "sweet" and "suitable for ice-cream toppings" -- tends to cancel out each's goodness with an excess of goop. Such, unfortunately, is the case with Sing It! (Rounder) a well-intentioned and often pleasant collaboration from Texas boogie-woogie pianist Marcia Ball, New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas, and Mother Earth herself, Tracy Nelson, that fails to bring out any of the true and strong flavors of which all of these women are capable.
But the decision to package the three in a faked equality betrays the weakness in blanket labels. Yes, the idea of recording any of these blues-based artists in a New Orleans studio with the appropriate musicians could have been a good one, because, yes, these three are "roots music" singers and performers. But throwing them together as this disc has done disregards the depth and the difference in their respective roots, cutting each one short and grafting them all onto a generic pop stock that does none any service.
Nelson, who since the psychedelic era has done her best work covering Thomas's tunes, serves as the lowest common denominator here, her tunes (like the ponderous "Please No More") providing a generic '60s-pop blues kind of base. Her singing still sounds uncannily like Thomas's, only slightly deeper, even muddy at times. As a backing voice, a harmonizer, she anchors the trio. But as a soloist, she's not Janis, and here she is outclassed.
Thomas fares best on this outing, digging into such tunes as the
gospel-flavored "Yield Not to Temptation." Her simple, nearly spoken lovers'
warning rides the rhythm and refuses to be smoothed over. Rising to the finale,
pulling those gospel choruses out of her R&B past, she is the soul queen,
without compromise. But even here, as her colleagues chime in on the
"Hallelujah" rave-up back-up, the material fails her. The tambourine-shaking
shout fest arrives too soon; Thomas has paid her dues, but this song hasn't
earned the big ending. On a 30-year-old (but timeless) hit like "Break-a-Way"
(re-released in 1996 on Razor & Tie's The Irma Thomas Collection),
the climax comes just as quickly, heralded by tinny bells and an insistent
parade-march rhythm, but the high-pitched payoff feels justified. The calmer,
older Thomas of last year's Story of My Life (Rounder) relied more on
soul than on gospel frenzy, but she sang with assurance, revisiting her New
Orleans roots with pride. She didn't need a gimmick then, and next time out she
would do better to persuade her colleagues to share a similar faith in
themselves.
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