Billy Price: East End Avenue

Back to the Roots (Belgium), #57, October 2006

It’s been almost 6 years since we’d put a brand new studio album of Billy Price in our cd player. During that period there were of course the double live album ‘Sworn Testemony’ and the live dvd ‘Funky…Funky Soul’ (entire BRBF concert 2003).

Billy produced, as expected, this cd. And that he knows what he’s doing is a sure thing. But first he went looking for song material. That was to be found through the writer’s duo, Jon and Sally Tiven, not unknown people in the soul world. (o.a. Wilson Pickett’s It Harder Now). They delivered the pleasing, yet threatening ‘Push Me To The Limit’ (these horns!). Together with them he wrote five other songs. Billy also persuaded fellow-townsman and songwriter Mike Sweeney who brought another six songs to the studio. His ‘Only Two Lovers’ vagely sounds like Steely Dan and it is, no doubt, my favourite song on this cd, although I could not detect any missers. ‘The Price I Paid For Loving You’ is a beautiful ballad, while ‘Sweet Mistreatin’Love’, ‘She Left Me With These Blues’and ‘Funky Like Dyke, pt 2’ (about Dyke & The Blazers), all in their own right, are very funky. If ‘Soul Sailing’ would’ve been a single in the mid sixties, it surely would’ve been a million seller. This album bursts of dynamic and inspired, adult soul music! The whole band is playing strong and tight and the horn section and the backing vocals are a delight for your ears. This is ultimate contagious soul, sung and played by professionals with the right feeling!

- Peter Jacobs

The Internet Business Pages (Pittsburgh Home Page)
Copyright © 2000 The Internet Business Pages (webster@lonewolf.com)