William Bell - This Is Where I Live

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 6 / 9 / 2016

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“Listen people, listen, I’m gonna sing you a song/About a man who lived good but didn’t live too long.” Otis Redding, arguably the greatest soul singer ever, lost his life in a plane crash in December 1967 aged just 26. Five months later Stax label-mate William Bell opened his eulogy to Redding, ‘Tribute to a King’, with those lines. Bell was no stranger to recording. By that time he’d racked up a handful of entries on the American R’n’B charts under his own name and had his songs covered by other artists, one of the most notable being Albert King’s ‘Born under a Bad Sign’ which was co-written by Bell with Booker T Jones of The MGs. In 1968 Cream cut a version for their ‘Wheels Of Fire’ album, introducing Bell’s work to an even wider audience. Almost half a century later and this hardened soul still wells up when he hears the emotion in Bell’s vocals on ‘Tribute to a King’. Bell was always a step apart from the other soul giants of those days. There’s no doubt that Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding could wring every last fragment of emotion out of every word they sang, and then there were the Percy Sledge types at the other end of the scale with a much smoother but none less effective delivery. William Bell fell somewhere in-between. Bell was far from a soul belter but when he sang you had to listen. His voice carried more pain than most of the smoother voiced soul giants. You could feel what Bell was singing and believed he had lived through every word. As much as, say, Redding and Sledge he stood alone with a voice and delivery all of his own. The real, original soul singers seemed to have faded away from the limelight as music tastes changed with the times, but a few have made something of a comeback, Mavis Staples for one. Arthur Alexander had cut a new album just before his life was cut short in 1993, and was surely poised for success once again after years out of the business. William Bell continued making music for some time after the hits dried up for him and his label, Stax, went bankrupt. He found some well deserved success with a couple of late 70s album on Mercury and slipped out the occasional album on his own Wilbe label but it appeared that, musically, his best days were behind him. Stax, now revitalized through the Concord Music Group, has recently issued a collection of new songs recorded by Bell under the appropriate title of ‘This is Where I Live'. The fact that Bell is back is enough to warm the heart of any old soul boy but there are a couple of things that make this album extra special. Firstly the results show that even though Bell is well into his seventh decade his voice has lost none of the power or passion it displayed back in the 60s and 70s. Secondly pairing Bell with acclaimed producer John Leventhal was an inspired move. Leventhal, known for his work in the country/ Americana field with Rosanne Cash (Leventhal’s wife) and Shawn Colvin to name just a couple, obviously understands exactly where Bell is coming from and what was needed to make his latest batch of songs stand out from the crowd. There’s a lovely, warm, retro feel to many of the songs on the album but Leventhal has added a contemporary bent to the songs, a freshness, without making them sound so much of this time that they will sound dated in a few years. In other words the duo, along with a crack team of musicians, have created timeless soul music, cut from the same cloth that Bell made his name with. Over halfway into 2016 and if ‘This is Where I Live’ doesn’t make some of those ‘best of 2016’ lists when the time comes there really is no justice in this world. It’s a stunning collection of twelve songs. There are two songs that Bell had no hand in writing, Jesse Winchester’s ‘All Your Stories’ and ‘Walking on a Tightrope’ which producer Leventhal co-wrote with Rosanne Cash, the bulk of the remainder are new songs Bell wrote with Leventhal and, for the most part, Marc Cohn. There’s also an updated version of ‘Born under a Bad Sign’. The album begins with ‘The Three of Me’, Leventhal’s opening guitar lines and keyboard instantly recalling any number of soul classics (Roshell Anderson’s ‘Know What You’re Doing’ popped into this mind), before Bell’s warm, inviting vocals come in (“Last night I had a dream/And there were three of me/There was the man I was/The man I am/And the man I want to be”). Just thirty seconds in and it’s so obvious that William Bell is back and just as brilliant, or dare we say, even better than we remember him. The song is a perfect slab of timeless southern soul, that even the most inept singer would have difficulty in fouling up but in Bell’s hands and with a producer who obviously feels the music just as much as Bell does (and who plays most of it too) it’s elevated even further. Either Leventhal has sacks of fairy dust stacked in the corner of the studio that he’s sprinkled over Bell’s vocals or Bell, now past his mid-seventies, is singing better than he ever did. We’ll opt for the latter. It’s no doubt the truth. Bell was always an honest singer, one that you had to believe in, but, more than ever, it sounds like he’s lived through every one of these songs. Not for one second do the vocals sound forced or fake. It’s impossible not to be drawn into the songs. While that Stax/Muscle Shoals sound rightly informs many of the songs on the album, on Winchester’s reflective ‘All Your Stories’ Leventhal introduces a little of his brand of Americana/country to stunning effect. Bell’s yearning vocal performance is truly a spine-chilling moment, the sparse musical backing only highlighting just what an exceptional interpreter Bell is as well as being an remarkable lyricist. Bell and Leventhal have covered all aspects of what has become known as Southern Soul music here; there are the grittier cuts like ‘More Rooms’ where the band create a funky groove while Bell’s expressive vocals reveal, as he once again looks back on his life, that “the fire was burning hot but ashes was all we got…there’s more rooms in a house, more rooms to live than the bedroom”. Bell takes the listener on a tour of the house, through the kitchen “where meals were never made”, the nursery “where the babies never cried”. It’s a stunningly crafted piece of music, Leventhal’s guitar and organ again complimenting the passion in Bell’s vocals. There’s even a little swamp-rock mixed into ‘Mississippi-Arkansas Bridge’, Leventhal’s bluesy guitar licks adding further texture to the song. While all the songs share the same common-thread of that classic Stax sound both Bell and Leventhal have pushed the boundaries slightly and introduced unexpected nuances to make the results fresh and exciting. While it’s impossible to pick a favourite, that opening cut ‘The Three of Me’ will always raise a smile and be special simply because it gave notice by starting the album that William Bell was back and had lost none of his musical talent, the autobiographical cuts such as ‘This is Where I Live” lock into such an addictive groove while boasting some of Bell’s most astute and honest lyrics which turns them into instant classics. Turn on the radio in the UK just now and the chances are that you will hear a version of ‘Private Number’ by couple of homegrown singers who really should know better. It’s devoid of any kind of sou. It’s empty. Those who are familiar with Bell’s original version with Judy Clay stop reading this and buy ‘This is Where I Live’. You know what to expect and Bell delivers. And some. Those whose introduction to Bell’s music through that soulless cover of ‘Private Number’ should check out the original and then this latest album by Bell. That’s how to do it.

Track Listing:-

1 The Three Of Me
2 The House Always Wins
3 Poison In The Well
4 I Will Take Care Of You
5 Born Under A Bad Sign
6 All Your Stories
7 Walking On A Tightrope
8 This Is Where I Live
9 More Rooms
10 All The Things You Can't Remember
11 Mississippi-Arkansas Bridge
12 People Want To Go Home

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/williambellmusic/
https://twitter.com/WBellMusic
http://www.williambell.com/#thisiswhereilive

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