Leon Russell  Face in the Crowd Gold CD NEU OVP Sealed

Produktinformation


Audio CD (1999)
Anzahl Disks/Tonträger: 1
Label: Navarre Records (Sagestone SAG-5003-2)
         Tracks

1. Love Is a Battlefield
2. Dr. Love
3. Down in the Flood
4. So Hard to Say Goodbye
5. Betty Ann
6. This Heart of Mine
7. Message From My Baby
8. Blue Eyes & A Black Heart
9. What Will I Do Without You
10. Mean and Evil
11. Devil Started Talking, The
12. Don't Bring the Blues to Bed

 
Review by William Ruhlmann
After a popular period in the first half of the 1970s, Leon Russell dissipated his commercial appeal making duet albums with his wife and country collections. He didn't release a regular studio album between 1979's Life & Love and 1992's Bruce Hornsby-helmed Anything Can Happen. That album was criticized for Hornsby's meddling and performed disappointingly. Seven years later (with another of his "Hank Wilson" country albums in between), Russell is back on a small label with a more characteristic set that he co-produced with his son Teddy Jack. The craggy voice, even craggier now that Russell is in his late fifties, is in place, and the songs are piano-based R&B in his familiar style. Some echoes are even explicit: "Betty Ann," for example, is a calmer re-write of "Delta Lady." More often, however, the songs simply are consistent with the swampy style Russell pioneered in the early '70s, especially "Message From My Baby," "Mean And Evil," and "Don't Bring The Blues To Bed." No doubt it is far too late for Russell to regain his commercial standing, but old fans will find this album a long-awaited return to form.