Marlena Shaw Hare and Hounds Birmingham 19th March

There was a great big Marlena Shaw sized musical gap in my musical knowledge and the first I knew of her was the advert featuring California Soul. It’s a phenomenal; record. Joyful, uplifting and loose. As a singer she’s swung from Swing, Jazz, Disco, and Millie Jackson style monologues, sung with The Count Basie Orchestra, released albums on Blue Note and played with Sammy Davies Jr.
The Hare and Hounds is a great place to be see bands and the booking policy means you are likely to see much bigger names than you would credit for a suburban pub. I saw her second set of the set of the evening.

The small band (bass, drums, guitar, keyboards, sax/flute and a variety of jazz hats) warmed up with something funky before easing into Wade In The Water. I could see Marlena Shaw leaning on her walking stick in the Victorian tiled hallway to the left of the stage but she’d shaken off her frailty when she got onto the stage to sing the last few lines of the of the song…and she can still sing!
She may be an old Soul trooper, still able to shrug off the years with a fairly relentless touring schedule but there is a slight whiff of cabaret about the proceedings. The Jazz leanings mean there is always the threat of an “ooh biddi boo boo ” and the MOR soul of Feel Like Makin' Love sounds like it could be a busy night as she sings the line Vegas Cabaret Style “Feel like making love, to you and you and you”
I can never resist between song chat and Soulful adlibs, even if they are as unnerving as “Your Daddy likes it. Your Mamma does too. And if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be no you”

One of the songs is about rhythm as a language and Slave Traders attempt to control it. Part history lesson, part drum lesson as the Nick Hornby lookalike drummer and Shaw play off each other. It sounded great, albeit a bit incongruous when she concludes “Talk to me Crispin”.

Fittingly she played Ain’t Doin’ Too Bad by Bobby Bland. The master of that Big Band orchestrated Soul sound. Her version had plenty of R&B swagger.
Inevitably the last song was California Soul. No encore but earlier on there had been a false start and she joked that she’d got mixed up with the set. So maybe she’d had enough and didn’t want to go through the ritual of keeping the hit back. I was a bit disappointed and slightly underwhelmed by the gig. The band had played impeccably but never really caught fire. Shaw’s voice is still intact and if the years have put a cabaret edge to her, she’s probably not that bothered. She’s still working!

Wade In The Water
Rhythm Of Love
Feel Like Makin’ Love
Talk To Me Crispin…..but it’s almost certainly not called that!
Ain’t Doin’ Too Bad
Hope In A Hopeless World
Woman Of The Ghetto
California Soul