SANCTIFIED STEEL THE ROBERT RANDOLPH WAY & OTHER DELIGHTS

a selection of reviews by Julian Piper

ROBERT RANDOLPH and the FAMILY BAND

Are you ready to testify? Are you REDEEEEEE ….?’ It’s around 11.00pm on a Saturday night in the Roseland Ballroom 239 West 52nd street New York City and make no mistake, Robert Randolph is in his Church. The White Stripes played here two days before and although the Stones and Paul McCartney have all used the Roseland to hold court, it’s difficult to imagine either act having the electric audience rapport that Randolph achieves. After his shattering two and a half hour set, only a heathen would dare not to respond in kind.

It’s unlikely that anyone has ever played a 13 string pedal steel behind their head or knelt down as if taking Holy Communion, and this 25 year old son of a Deacon in a small New Jersey church, is gifted with a technique that is simply mind boggling.

There’s nothing new about pedal steel guitars of course, they’ve been the staple backing on just about every piece of Nashville schmaltz over the course of the last half century. It’s unlikely however that many of the Roseland audience will have ever heard the sounds of ‘Sacred Steel’, quietly nurtured in the roof raising black churches of ‘the House Of God’, by virtuosos like Ted Beard, Chuckie Campbell and Calvin Cooke

Fronting a Rock band with a pedal steel, singing like he was in Church, but playing like no one has ever played quite like Robert Randolph.

‘The history of the music that black people like to listen to is supposed to be smooth, Luther Vandross or Whitney Houston,’’ Randolph explains back in his home town of Orange New Jersey, ‘but if you go to Church – that all changes. In Church everything is loud, they sing loud, clap loud, shout loud but outside you have to be cool – listen to R.n’B. So we’ve had a lot of black audiences gravitate towards us just because I’m not singing negative lyrics and they can relate to our music; I’m from the same background as a lot of these people, know the same things but know not to fall into the same trap. ‘……………

Although it’s only half an hour’s drive across the Hudson river, the hollow Main Street of Orange New Jersey and its wide range of 99c Bargain stores is a long way from the high rise opulence of downtown Manhattan.

It’s unseasonably warm but only a few people stroll aimlessly up and down the sidewalk, and apart from the stoned cackling of a couple of black kids, smiles seem well out of fashion.

A few blocks away all that changes abruptly. Nestling inconspicuously between tidy clapboard houses in a quiet leafy road, is the small red brick chapel that is the House Of God, and as usual around this time the doors are opening for business.

This is where the Randolph Family Band started out, Robert’s nephew Marcus on drums and Robert on pedal steel. If Soul ever needed a home, then this must be it.

After watching his father Everette put on a performance worthy of James Brown (by the end his suit was drenched in sweat, and the small congregation emotionally drained), it’s obvious that Robert Randolph’s band is aptly named.

‘I remember when the Pastor anointed his hands’’, says Everette, ‘ Robert was already a gifted child; when only six years old he could recite the whole eleventh chapter of Hebrews.

As soon as he took on this instrument, he learnt so quickly that everyone was looking at him in amazement. Ted Beard told me that Robert was special and that people like him only come around once in a blue moon.

‘I’ve always been different, ‘ Randolph comments, ‘always been the one that feels whatever I do, has to be the cool thing, that’s probably how I got to be where I am. I was always the leader so if I told my friends that I was going to stay in at home practising the steel rather than running around the streets, they just accepted it. I was running wild for a time – street gangs, drugs, people getting murdered, having to deal with people with a violent mentality – all that was going on where I lived. I was just lucky because I was taught better; my aunts and uncles would all give me a hard time about what I was doing and when it all began piling up, it began to make sense.

The more we get out to the black market, the more they’ll be interested. I’m more connected to people that play soulfully, I don’t need to play every note, every scale. Growing up as I did playing in church was like making fresh orange juice; you have to squeeze everything you can out of every note because you have to connect.’

In the tradition of the very greatest black artists who started out in Church – Little Richard, James Brown, Aretha Franklin – the way things are looking Robert Randolph might just be the next.

SPECIMEN REVIEWS !

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND - LIVE AT THE ATLANTA POP FESTIVAL ***

A reissued slice of stoned vintage Southern fried soul

When they first blew out of sleepy Macon Georgia the Allman Brothers band were a revelation. Steeped in blues and deep soul in equal parts, somehow this bunch of neo – Hippies, absorbed their musical heritage and repackaged it as consumer friendly for America’s stoned freak generation.

Recorded nine months before ‘Live At The Fillmore East’, the album that finally set the ‘Brothers’ on the big time U.S. stadium trail, this unique time capsule of their 1970 Atlanta gig, shows the band ‘hitting the note’ as Duane would say, in no uncertain manner.

Although a band to whom ‘stimulants’ were once a religion, reassuringly from Duane’s opening slide slur down his S.G.’s neck to bring in ‘Statesboro Blues’, the presence of 500,000 dope heads seems to have had little influence; the band are nothing short of sensational, with Duane’s edgy licks the perfect foil to Gregg’s churchy vocals..

Always very much an American phenomenon – incredibly in thirty years they’ve only set foot on U.K. soil once more than Elvis(!) –when Gregg said ‘’We’re a band that jams - not a jam band’’, he nailed the paradox that always bedevilled his bunch of ‘bedenimed’ buddies.

On the one hand as their blistering blues covers show, on this reading the Allman’s were the tightest white blues outfit on the planet. Then again their 28 minute noodlings on ‘Mountain Jam’, based on Donovan’s twee ditty, even given Duane and Dickie Betts predilection for the spiritual work of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, are certainly not for the faint hearted.

But when the ‘Brothers’ ride their roaring anthemIc ‘Whipping Post’, a song that still amazes with its’ almost demonic time changes and staggering guitar interplay, you can but be amazed. They just don’t make ‘em like this any more in Macon.…………..

DEREK TRUCKS BAND " SOUL SERENADE" Columbia COL 5133102

Difficult one this. The second band outing for 24 year old Derek Trucks, the prodigiously talented son of veteran Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks, sees him leading his band through yet another mind blowing gumbo of complex tunes and rhythms.

From the slow soul funk of the old King Curtis title track, to his simply steaming work out on the jazzy ‘Elvin’, Trucks sensual slide dominates proceedings with a deep resonant horn like tone that even Duane would have been proud of.

And if the idea of mixing Jazz with slide guitar sounds a wee bit weird – then think again. It works.

This whole album just drips with class - real music for real people. Lets just hope that Derek doesn’t stretch out too far and leave us behind. This guy wants to be a musician -, not a star. ***