Lee Fields & the Expressions: Faithful Man [TRUTH & SOUL]

Why you'll love it

Faithful Man pairs Lee Fields' gospel-strong voice with the Expressions' slow-burning deep-soul arrangements, produced by Leon Michels and Jeff Silverman for Truth & Soul. It includes a soulful reading of the Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile."

About the album

Lee Fields left Wilson, North Carolina for New York at seventeen with twenty dollars from his mother, and earned the nickname Little JB for moves and a voice that recalled James Brown. Decades of singles and side work followed, with names like Kool and the Gang, O. V. Wright and Darrell Banks along the way, before a new generation of soul revivalists came looking for him.

Truth & Soul's Leon Michels and Jeff Silverman built the Expressions around him and kept the sound deep and unhurried. The title track is a slow, pleading heartbreaker, "I Still Got It" swaggers, "Still Hanging On" and "Wish You Were Here" ache in the best way, and the band's take on "Moonlight Mile" turns the Stones' late-night ballad into proper southern soul. "It's All Over (But The Crying)" closes on a note of hard-won grace.

It sits with Special Night and It Rains Love as one of the high points of his work with the Expressions. Fields was past sixty when he made it, which suggests the secret to a great soul voice is simply to keep using it.

Also at Kops: more Lee Fields on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Truth & Soul (cat# TS018-LP), a reissue of the 2012 album.