Some blue-eyed soul now from a gentleman highly regarded in several quarters. Price has his own band but the credits suggest they were not party to this recording, produced and arranged by Swamp Dogg. Nevertheless, real musicians were used throughout this ten tracker, eight of which are Jerry 'Swamp Dogg' Williams compositions. The album gets under way with a real romping mover, 'Crack Crack (When Are You Coming Back),' before settling down to swaying mode on 'Mine All Mine All Mine,' graced by a mid-way sax solo from Jerry Peterson. Brass features heavily on the toe-tapping 'I Know It's Your Party (I Just Came to Dance)' and it also makes an effective lead into the ballad cut, 'This Magic Hour,' which comes pretty damn close to creating a mid-sixties' Stax sound. Billy may lack the rawness of an Eddie Hinton or the mellow depth of a Bill Medley, but this white man pours his soul into this one and he manages to conjure up--via his phrasing--memories of Otis Redding to an uncanny degree.

'Indefinitely' packs five syllables where there would better be four and some philosophical lyrics into a steady mid-pacer before moving onto 'What Is Love (What Makes You Think You Deserve Some).' Someone in the studio can be heard saying "This is supposed to be a serious song here." Once it gets under way, we sure didn't need to be told: the deep ballad is a stand-out. 'No Matter How You Turn or Twist It' is an almost mid-tempo, relatively simple item which, for some reason, gets some out-of-place flamenco guitars mid-way, ruining the song completely. Not sure about the cover of 'Can I Change My Mind' either but at least Swamp's arrangement tries to do something a little different. The set's other outside number comes from the pens of Peter Brown and Frank Fuchs. It--'One In a Million"--perhaps tries a little too hard to be contemporary and Price sounds rather uncomfortable on the higher notes. Maybe one for the 'divas.'

We go out on 'Pass the Sugar,' somewhat old-style mid-beat Jerry Williams which had me double-checking he had not cut it sometime somewhere himself. I'd heard little of Billy Price until about three or four months ago and I suspect I'm not alone. For 'novices,' this is not a bad place to start and Dave Porter at Vivid Sound should have laid in some copies by the time you read this.