CALL IT BLUE-EYED SOUL AT YOUR PERIL

It is soul or it is not. No qualifiers, Righteous Brothers. This kid has it and, at 23, has a lot of singing ahead of him.

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Eli "Paperboy Reed & the True Loves - The Satisfier mp3 and two more at Bag of Songs

4/23/08: Another mp3 and lengthy bio at The B Side:

Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves - It's Easier mp3 at The B Side

NEW 4/24/08: NPR plugs the Paperboy!

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MORE NEW SOUL BLOOD:

Ryan Shaw - Do the 45 also at Bag of Songs

CURTIS MAYFIELD & THE HEAVY

I'm as guilty of it as anybody: the practice of describing a band as "(band name) meets (band name)", usually referencing bands with disparate sounds. Descriptions like that are rarely accurate to anyone but the person doing the describing. But, more often than not, I fall for them. So when visiting Some Velvet Blog, I read "damn hot engaging musical intersection where Muddy Waters meets Prince, where big Zep beats meet The Stooges, where Sly and The Family meet the Son of Superfly," I'm slobbering before I've finished reading the sentence. I'm off to the races. So it's no surprise that I missed the last key reference: Superfly. (As in "Superfly," the song by Curtis Mayfield, from the soundtrack to the film of the same name.)

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So, I'm already downloading and wondering why the guy didn't reference Curtis Mayfield. I'm thinking, "Prince? Stooges? Okay, it's bombastic like Led Zep, but that's not Prince I'm hearing"; finally settling on Mayfield's "Freddy's Dead" as the missing ingredient. When I returned to the blog to see if the mp3 was still live, and reread the text, boy, did I feel like a dip. All that aside, "Coleen," followed by "Freddy's Dead" passed the CD Mix Challenge. And the Heavy are throwing a lot in there.

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The Heavy - Coleen mp3 and That Kind of Man video at Some Velvet Blog
Curtis Mayfield - Freddy's Dead mp3 (and others) at the Leather Canary
The Heavy - That Kind of Man mp3 at Anyone's Guess
The Heavy at MySpace
Curtis Mayfield profile at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame