LCV Spring 2013 - (Page 92)

The acclaimed singer records an album of doo-wop classics ince the start of his recording career in 1960, Aaron Neville has stood out as one of the most distinctive and affecting singers to ever emerge from New Orleans. Neville’s unique voice and vocal style, simultaneously sensual and ethereal, are immediately identifiable thanks to a suspensefully understated sense of phrasing that paradoxically soars to dramatic, quavering, falsetto flourishes. Neville’s eclectic oeuvre ranges from rhythm and blues to funk, Mardi Gras Indian songs, cover versions of classic country hits, gospel, powerful commercial pop music, and more. He has sung all these genres with consummate professionalism—as a solo artist, in a duet with Linda Ronstadt, and with his three siblings in the Neville Brothers band. He has frequently scaled the pop charts and garnered many major music-industry awards. Despite more than 50 years in the business, though, Aaron Neville has never—until the recent release of My True Story (EMI)—devoted an entire album to his favorite style: doo-wop singing. Doo-wop is an onomatopoeic term that describes the nonverbal backup vocals used by many popular rhythm & blues groups from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Like much musical nomenclature—“swamp pop” is another example— “doowop” was superimposed on this style retroactively. If asked, during doo-wop’s peak years, most artists who sang it would probably have described their music as R&B. Doo-wop is rooted in African American a cappella gospel quartet singing of the early 20th century, which combined rich group harmonies with alternating lead vocals that used starkly contrasting high and low registers to great effect. Doo-wop also reflects the influence of such popular secular groups as the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers. Nationally prominent doo-wop groups—many of whom, for some reason, found it trendy to name themselves for species of birds—included the Orioles, the Ravens, the Penguins and the Flamingos. The latter group’s haunting ballad “I Only Have Eyes For You,” from 1959, stands as one of doo-wop’s best-known and most enduring signature songs. So does the up-tempo “Speedo,” by the Cadillacs, from 1955. Neville was raised amidst the distinctive sounds of New Orleans R&B and Mardi Gras Indian music, which greatly affected him, but doo-wop was always his first love. New Orleans was not a hotbed of doo-wop compared to the Northeast, but the city did nurture such local practitioners as the Spiders, as well as the Blue Diamonds, a group fronted by Ernie K-Doe before he became a solo artist. Although New Orleans is often considered culturally insular and impervious to national trends, the above-mentioned S 92 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES • Spring 2013 “bird bands” and their colleagues were very popular in the Big Easy, where Neville idolized them. “I went to the school of doowop-ology,” he told this writer in a 1990 interview, utilizing a stock phrase that he has imparted to many other journalists before and since. “Doo-wop did something to me,” Neville continued, “and just to be able to sing like that still does something to me. It’s like medicine.” Even so, Neville’s classic ’60s recordings—including “Over You,” “Wrong Number” and his huge hit “Tell It Like It Is”—wisely focused on his plaintive lead vocals, with only minimal backup singing. In those somewhat delicate settings, doo-wop’s polysyllabic and rhythmic intensity might have left Neville somewhat overshadowed. Back then, Neville was hungry for hits, and he deferred to the sage advice of producers such as Allen Toussaint and George Davis, with successful results. But today, at age 71, established megastardom has given Neville the rare luxury of recording whatever he wants. He has no need to cast an anxious eye towards the music-business marketplace, where doo-wop is currently quite esoteric. Freed from commercial constraints, My True Story showcases Neville in a collection of doo-wop classics made famous by venerable artists including Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, Thurston Harris, Ben E. King, the Drifters, the Ronettes, and the Jive Five, who first recorded this album’s title track. Neville sings the favored music of his youth with obvious joy and effortless command, choosing well-crafted old songs that are ageless rather than dated. Many such retro albums by major artists on major record labels are glaringly overproduced in an effort to somehow seem modern. Garish, obtrusive orchestration and saccharine string sections often abound. My True Story, by curious contrast, features respected veteran musicians—including The Rolling Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards—who stay out of Neville’s way to the point that their accompaniment sounds anonymous, muted, and lacking in dynamism. Working musicians may well notice this restraint, 

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