Artist: Ruthie Foster
Album: Live at the Paramount
Label: Blue Corn
Release Date: 05.15.2020
Multitudes of musical artists regularly seek out Ruthie Foster to sing on their albums and at their concerts. Foster possesses a caramel-creamy, and utterly breathtaking voice that electrifies and enhances everything she graces. She recently appeared on Big Band of Brothers, a terrific big band tribute to The Allman Brothers Band, singing two of Gregg Allman’s classics—not at all like Allman, but with the same level of intensity and individuality that he possessed. Live at the Paramount presents a glorious Ruthie Foster extravaganza held in her home town of Austin, Texas on January 26th, 2019, around the time of the Brothers date.
The Ruthie Foster Big Band features a rockin’ guitar-bass-drums-piano quartet, a ten-piece brass section with a conductor, and three backing vocalists. One part Baptist preacher and one part Ella Fitzgerald, Foster commands center stage, enthralling the audience with her stratospheric range in a career-spanning program split evenly among eloquently-written originals and surprising—but very suitable—covers.
Foster’s upbringing in a family of gospel singers inspired her arresting ways with soul music and the blues. Of her 11 albums to date, this presents the ultimate opportunity to experience the results of her journey. To roaring applause, Foster’s young daughter introduces her mom in a touching prelude to “Brand New Day,” with which Foster conjures plantation field hands, and the ability of the human voice to prompt not only hope, but change. It’s a gripping start, and a perfect segue into the powerful soul of “Might Not Be Right,” a song Foster co-wrote with soul music great William Bell. Foster takes hold of June Carter Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and quiets it into a lush, smoky ballad, completely unlike Johnny Cash’s hard country. Her “Stone Love” practically blows the roof off the theatre, everyone on stage rocking with gleeful purpose. Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett’s “The Ghetto” then simmers and explodes, the gospel and the soul of it locked in harmony. And so it goes, all the way through to the gorgeous encores of “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Mack the Knife,” which evoke the classic arrangements of Quincy Jones and Duke Ellington, respectively.
The phenomenal Ruthie Foster has thus far earned three Grammy Award nominations. This incredibly exciting album full of true soul should clinch a win.
—Tom Clarke
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