{"id":18628,"date":"2020-04-11T05:30:29","date_gmt":"2020-04-11T09:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=18628"},"modified":"2020-04-22T11:07:56","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T15:07:56","slug":"album-review-albert-cummings-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/11\/album-review-albert-cummings-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Albert Cummings &#8212; Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-18629\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/albert_cummings.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/albert_cummings.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/albert_cummings-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/albert_cummings-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Albert Cummings began his recording career in 2000 with <i>The Long Way<\/i>; his latest, 2020\u2019s <i>Believe<\/i> is the eighth release from the blues guitarist\/singer. The album mixes originals with classics; the latter choices skirt the edges of the blues idiom, but the blues feeling &#8211; -its ineffable quality \u2013 is there in ample supply. A cover of Sam and Dave\u2019s \u201cHold On (I\u2019m Comin\u2019)\u201d -written by the mighty Memphis team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter \u2013 is a prime example. As <i>Believe<\/i>&#8216;s opening track, it features an arrangement not miles away from the \u201860s original, but Cummings heightens the blues character that has always existed within the tune.<\/p>\n<p>Tunes like Cummings\u2019 original \u201cDo What Mama Says\u201d don\u2019t aim to break new ground. What they do instead is deliver on the style that has worked well for this artist. The song\u2019s structure and phrasing are more than a bit reminiscent of Al Green\u2019s \u201cTake Me to the River,\u201d but there\u2019s not a thing wrong with that.<\/p>\n<p>Cummings and his sidemen and women work in a Memphis style throughout the album; the soulful quality of the music is consistently engaging, and the tasty horn charts and female backing chorus are all note perfect. In his liner note message, Cummings makes plain that the inspiration for this project was the influence that FAME Studios has on him. He recorded the album there with producer Jim Gaines. Even when Cummings is cranking out straight blues like Willie Dixon\u2019s \u201cRed Rooster,\u201d the Bluff City flavor comes though.<\/p>\n<p>Fans who return to Cummings\u2019 album to hear him tear up the fretboard won\u2019t come away disappointed; his Stratocaster soloing is all over the record, especially on \u201cRed Rooster.\u201d Some unexpected dig-deep choices reveal just how wide a stylistic breadth Cummings has: to wit, his readings of Leon Russel\u2019s \u201cMe and My Guitar\u201d and Van Morrison\u2019s \u201cCrazy Love.\u201d He makes both his own, and isn\u2019t afraid to lean into a gospel feel (on the Morrison track) that finds him putting down his guitar. The results are sweet and soulful, with a feel reminiscent of Delaney and Bonnie.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s an immediacy to the sounds on <i>Believe<\/i>; this isn\u2019t the overly slick blues too often found on new releases. Instead it\u2019s polished but real and sincere. Borrowing a title phrase from one of the album\u2019s standout originals, it\u2019s all good. And that ain\u2019t bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Albert Cummings began his recording career in 2000 with The Long Way; his latest, 2020\u2019s Believe is the eighth release from the blues guitarist\/singer. The album mixes originals with classics; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,49,65],"tags":[4171],"class_list":["post-18628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-new-release","category-review","tag-albert-cummings","cat-9-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18630,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18628\/revisions\/18630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}