Music reviews
RUBY TURNER, HOWDEN PARK THEATRE, LIVINGSTON RUBY Turner’s visits as a guest singer with Jools Holland’s Rhythm And Blues Orchestra have maintained a profile hereabouts for the Brummie queen of soul and perhaps even increased her potential audience, as this near sell-out concert suggested. You really have to catch a whole performance of Turner and her appositely grooving band, however, to experience the full impact of her life-affirming artistry.
It’s a long time, as she noted, since Turner troubled the pop charts. As if she should worry. Her voice could easily pass for a young woman’s at times but the pleasure in listening to her now is enhanced by the character and deeper timbres that have come with the passing years. Few singers, surely, could reactivate the Eagles’ Take It To The Limit as quite the impassioned, gospel-fired but still tender mini soul opera it emerged as here.
There’s a lot of gospel in Turner’s sets, both overtly and covertly. Her recent album I’m Travelling On celebrated the connection and her singing of This Train, for Sister Rosetta Tharpe, caught this particular mentor magnificently as her voice duetted and duelled with Nick Marland’s slide guitar. Her soul strengths were to the fore, too, especially in a volcanic Stay With Me Baby that might have rivalled Lorraine Ellison’s blueprint.
Ska and rhythm and blues items added to the variety, with a superbly grooving Breath I Need telegraphing the dynamic interaction between singer and band that would peak with I’d Rather Go Blind, dedicated here to its originator, Etta James, but delivered yet again with the shiversdown-the-spine testifying that has seen Turner claim it as her signature song.