Inflammable material
A rare solo album from the Memphis guitar great. Play it Steve. Please! Says Geoff Brown.
ECONOMICAL AND exact, punchy and decorative, guitarist supreme Steve Cropper’s rhythm parts and lead lines were pillars of the M.G.’s style on their group recordings for Stax during the ’60s and early ’70s, and as the resident house band they provided the drive and colouring on innumerable soul classics recorded in that storied era in Memphis. A prolific songwriter and busy producer then and later, it’s perhaps no surprise that Cropper’s solo work has been limited. His previous album, 2011’s Dedicated, a generous tribute to The 5 Royales, featured guest vocals from many, including Steve Winwood, Lucinda Williams, Dan Penn and Bettye LaVette. In 2006 and 2008, the two long-players he recorded with former Rascal Felix Cavaliere had produced a bulk of unfinished material, some of which he’s now brought to the table on Fire It Up, declaring it his “first proper studio album” since 1969’s
With A Little Help From My Friends, which rather negates a pair of MCA albums, Playin’
My Thang and Night After Night, released in 1981 and ’82 respectively.
Fire It Up is a slow burner. The disappointment is that there’s only one instrumental, albeit the funky Bush Hog is visited three times. Part 1 makes for a strong if brief opening statement, as much Markeys as M.G.’s. Thereafter, the vocals of Roger C Reale rarely transcend the standard bluesrock lyric ideas and rhymes of the material, while the arrangements push few envelopes.
That said, after revving up through the title track, One Good Turn takes the ear, with its prompting horns, a bed of organ and typically frugal yet nourishing guitar lines from Cropper’s inimitable touch on a Fender. The fuller horn arrangement on Far Away is welcome, as Cropper’s guitar riffs asides to Reale’s vocal, who near the end offers a “fa-fa-fa- far away”. Wonder where that idea came from? But no amount of guitar decoration can rescue the clichéd lyrics of Two Wrongs and some of the other rather by-the-numbers, mid-tempo bluesrocking that’s going on.
Famously, Sam Moore of Sam And Dave interjected “Play it, Steve” during the recording session for Soul Man, and one yearns for someone to holler a similar instruction at some point during Fire It Up.
For example, the strong opening horn riff to The Go-Getter Is Gone sounds like the perfect introduction to a storming Markeys instrumental until the lyrics break that particular spell, an impression not diminished by the Bush Hog Part 2 and Bush Hog tracks that follow to close the album on a high note.