A few years ago I was talking to a bass player in a blues band about what, exactly, constitutes the blues.  I named a few artists that I felt were blues singers, even though they didn’t sing what could be strictly defined as blues. Otis Redding? “Nope. Rhythm and blues.”  Sam and Dave? Same answer. Al Green, Aretha, O.V. Wright? Same answer as for the first two, a puzzled stare in response to Wright. What defined blues for this bass player, as it does for many other blues aficionados, was adherence to the 12 bar I-IV-V chord structure.1

By that standard, Z.Z. Hill, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Little Milton wouldn’t be considered blues singers. Bland’s “There Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” certainly doesn’t follow the form described above, but lyrics don’t get much bluer than this:

Hill, Bland, and Little Milton all recorded songs that don’t fit the defined blues form. Yet no one questions the fact that all three are blues singers. Hill named one of his albums I’m a Blues Man and he was—no other words describe his singing.  If blues were just a matter of form, those rotund, fedora-wearing boomers who sing and play in your local bar would be the real thing.

I remember an interview Robert Cray did with Musician magazine around the time of his first major label release, Strong Persuader, where he said that he considered Otis Redding a blues singer.  One listen to “Ole Man Trouble” and you know he’s right.  Southern soul, the records made in the Stax/Volt, Muscle Shoals, and Fame studios throughout the ’60s and in the Hi Records studios in the 70s, is blues by any definition. Motown, by contrast, was pop music. Soul music, yes, but with the exception of Junior Walker2, less blues based than Southern soul. Smokey Robinson stands with the very best popular songwriters of the sixties, but he didn’t write many songs that could be called blues. It’s worth noting, then, that Albert Collins’ Cold Snap, a defining album in the ‘80s blues resurgence, contains a tune Clarence Carter recorded at Fame studios in 1969, “Snatchin’ It Back.”

Shoulda Been Home is Cray’s twelfth record (his thirteenth if you count Showdown!, his collaboration with Albert Collins and Johnny Copland).  It contains two songs that were originally recorded by Elmore James, “Cry for Me Baby” and “The Twelve Year Old Boy,” and a song by Stax vocalist Sir Mack Rice,  “Love Sickness.”  Those choices illustrate what Cray is attempting to do, it seems to me. He’s revitalizing the blues by absorbing its most recent, unacknowledged strain and combining it with the traditional form. How successful you think he is in his attempt may depend on your flexibility in defining the blues.

I heard the opening track from Shoulda Been Home, “Baby’s Arms,” before I bought the disc, but I knew it was Cray as soon as I heard the riff that introduces the song. His guitar style is immediately recognizable. He uses a heavy pick and an aggressive attack, particularly on the lower strings. He plays Fender Stratocasters and sets them on the second or fourth position on the pickup switch. For those of you who aren’t guitar players, that won’t mean much, but if you listen to Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits and a few other guitarists you’ll hear the same tone settings.

While Southern soul singles were brief, generally less than three minutes, Cray often allows himself more time.  By stretching out the form, he can develop a complex story like “Already Gone, ” a tale of lost love: 

As the song develops, Cray examines the demise of the love affair, going from bluster (“Since your mind's already made up/Go on, baby/I'll make it on past the pain/Yes I will”) to self doubt (“And, ohhh, I'm so ashamed, baby/I hear people whispering everywhere I go”).  The track’s length allows Cray to give us a panoramic view of the singer’s reaction to his loss.  The guitar solos are brief—a few short lines during the bridge and a closing solo that comes in during the final minute of the song.  His voice, rather than his guitar, carries the message.

Cray has every reason to trust his singing. He’s probably the best soul singer since Al Green. Granted, it’s not exactly a crowded field. Other contenders are singing funk or other forms of R & B.  Cray’s urbanity owes a lot to the early Bobby Bland, but he also has a lot of Al Green’s grit; you can hear it in the screams that punctuate “Already Gone.”  Unlike many current R & B singers, Cray doesn’t “oversoul,” to use Jerry Wexler’s term.  The emotions he expresses are real and believable.

I’m not sure I realized what a complete guitarist Cray is until I listed carefully to this disc. It’s a given that he’s a great soloist, but his rhythm playing is so understated that it’s easy to miss how effective it is. He never overplays and his timing is absolutely on the mark. Taste and restraint were characteristics of the session musicians who played on the recordings made at the studios I named above. You never caught players like Al Jackson, “Duck” Dunn, Steve Cropper, and Teenie Hodges showing off. Everything they played was in support of the singer and it was only with repeated listening that you realized how great those musicians were, so subtle were their contributions. Cray and his band—Jim Pugh on keyboards, Kevin Hayes on drums, and Karl Sevareid on bass--could easily stand with those session players.

Steve Cropper and Teenie Hodges were given brief solos and even those were rare. It is in this area that Cray differs significantly from his predecessors. We can be thankful. He seldom repeats himself and each solo is emotional and, at the same time, melodically unique. Cray will often play something, a melody line or a brief phrase, that I sometimes hope to hear again, but he doesn’t revisit things he’s already used to good effect.  He approaches solos like a songwriter rather than a guitar slinger. 

Shoulda Been Home is Robert Cray's second disc for indie powerhouse Rykodisc. His previous disc, Take Your Shoes Off, is one of his best, but with a musician as consistent as Cray it's hard to single out one disc

above the rest. That consistency seems to create for some listeners an impression that Cray is standing still, an impression that may be reinforced by his decision to stay within the blues and soul styles. I think he and keyboard player Jim Pugh, who has contributed at least one song to each disc since I Was Warned (1992), have subtly broadened the possibilities of the soul song.  Cray’s solos, for example, take place over chord changes that give him a lot of room to improvise without sacrificing emotional directness.   

I wish the centerpiece of the new disc, "Out of Eden," had been tightened up a bit. At over nine minutes, it's overlong and could have made its point in half the time. Too bad; it has a strong melody that Cray sells

convincingly and he fires off some good solos over nice, moody work by Pugh. The song is marred further by a cheesy fake-applause intro and outro. Still, one tune out of twelve isn't a bad average and even that tune isn't a throwaway. With what's left, Shoulda Been Home still has more heart, soul, and real blues than you'll get from a lot of folks who want to hammer you with their blues credentials.

-- Joseph Taylor