The hurtin’ kind
Tragic giant of Southern soul who stepped out of Otis’s shadow. By Geoff Brown.
James Carr The Best Of… KENT SOUL. CD/DL
OTIS REDDING’S celebrated 1967 arrangement of Try A Little Tenderness, sparked by Al Jackson’s temperature raising drumming, is a highlight of his, and Southern soul’s, catalogue. James Carr, another master of the genre, echoed the trick the following year on a deep soul burner titled Life Turned Her That Way, one of 20 songs on this new primer of a man felt by many to have been equal or, indeed, superior to Otis. Born in Mississippi, raised in Memphis from the age of three and nourished by gospel, Carr was soon singing in local goups, his talent eventually spotted in a crowded market by local songwriter Roosevelt Jamison, who, after Stax declined, persuaded Goldwax Records’ Quinton Claunch to give Carr a try. His second single, Got My Mind Messed Up, was a Top 10 US R&B hit, followed by Love Attack and the exceptional Pouring Water On A Drowning Man, a brilliant image of a man slowly sunk by love. Its jaunty tempo can’t camouflage Carr’s desperation, but this was as nothing to the next single. At The Dark End Of The Street, written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman, who owned American Studios, the site of Carr’s early recordings, was the perfect vehicle for the singer’s rich baritone, with its leaps into raspyedged emotion. Dark End moves with a slow, measured tread, its gentle, yet unforgiving reveal finding the singer/narrator accepting that he and his lover’s assignations are bound to be discovered. It’s a hypnotising opener here. At The Dark End Of The Street’s transcendence has tended to overshadow his many other fine recordings, including the 19 here. Tracks two and three – a cover of These Arms Of Mine and Love Attack – echo several of Otis’s vocal tics, a recurring theme in Carr’s career. The aforesaid Life Turned Her That Way is a terrific example of his empathy as he asks us to, “stop and consider what my baby’s gone through/Just remember, I turned her that way.” In keeping with the late ’60s rise in black consciousness, Freedom Train is a forceful stomp –“Every man is gonna walk right proud, with his head up high.” But it’s the personal emotions rather than the political that Carr best engages with. Carr and his producers profitably deviate from the Southern soul template for Lover’s Competition, a New York sound, sung with less rasp than usual by Carr, more like Ben E King. I’m A Fool For You has a light pop feel; Lucky Loser adds country to that mix. His cover of the Bee Gees’ To Love Somebody is heartfelt, I Don’t Want To Be Hurt Any More has a hint of Sam & Dave’s I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down, and Let It Happen – “just fall in love”, he urges – sounds like a prelude to Dark End Of The Street. Like a character in one of his songs, Carr’s sublime talent was gradually crushed by life’s hard knocks and bad career breaks, and his vulnerable psyche succumbed in later life when drink and drugs began to take their toll. Carr died in 2001 from lung cancer, aged 58.