The Classic Soul of Ryan Shaw

A few weeks ago I happened to hear a song called "Do the 45" playing on Internet radio. I thought I was listening to an obscure soul classic from Wilson Pickett, Junior Walker, Sam and Dave, or some lesser-known soul artist of the same era.

I was only half right.

"Do the 45" is an obscure soul classic originally done by a group called the Sharpees in 1966. But the version I heard was recorded over 40 years later by a soul prodigy named Ryan Shaw. If it weren't for the improvements in sound recording that have been achieved over the past 40 years, Shaw's version could pass for an undiscovered chestnut.

That's a compliment.

Of the 12 slices of retro-soul featured on Ryan Shaw's debut CD, This Is Ryan Shaw, nine are covers of lesser-known hits originally made famous 30 to 40 years ago by Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Bobby Womack, and others. The remaining three are original songs written or co-written by Shaw. If you're not well versed in your vintage soul, however, you might have a hard time figuring out which are originals and which are covers.

That's also a complement.

Since the release of This Is Ryan Shaw earlier this year, the 26-year-old Decatur, Georgia native has received his fair share of media attention. The press is fascinated by his retro-sound. Critics write about his powerful and mature singing style. Reviewers praise his dynamic stage presence. But what is mentioned most often, in article after article, is the fact that Shaw never heard Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Bobby Womack, Donny Hathaway – or any other secular music – until he was 18.

Shaw, who performs Thursday, November 8 at Collingswood, New Jersery’s Scottish Rite Auditorium opening for the Derek Trucks Band, grew up in a deeply religious Pentecostal family. Music was an important part of his life from an early age, but it was strictly gospel music played in church, not the pop, soul, hip-hop, rock or R&B played on radio and MTV. He began singing in church at the age of five, and later formed a family group with his four brothers called the Shaw Boys. Shaw's early musical influences all came from the gospel world – singers like Darryl Coley, Keith Brooks, James Moore, and the Pace Sisters.

The first time he heard music that wasn’t gospel was when he left home for college. After briefly attending Georgia State University, he successfully auditioned for the gospel musical A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Part II). In 1998, he joined the cast of I Know I've Been Changed, written and directed by Tyler Perry (Diary of a Mad Black Woman). Shaw moved to New York with the production and performed to sold-out crowds at the Beacon Theater.

After the closing of I Know I've Been Changed, Ryan joined the resident cast of the Motown Café on West 57th Street where he performed Detroit soul favorites by the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye. Later he found another steady gig with a group that he says played “just about anything from the Fifties and Sixties that you could dance to – Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, Stax and Motown, Dion & the Belmonts, you name it.”

In a recent telephone interview, Shaw said that he gravitated toward soul music from the 60’s and early 70’s because many of those artists also started out singing gospel music.

“Those singers came out of the church, so I’ve been singing like them my whole life,” he said. “We all sang the same music growing up. I just didn’t know about their secular side. But it’s all based on traditional gospel music. It wasn’t a big switch for me, or anything I had to study. When I heard Wilson Pickett, and Sam and Dave – I said, ‘that was the same song I sang in church last Sunday, only with different words.’”

When he first decided to pursue a career in music, he considered becoming a gospel artist.

“Being born and raised in the church, you think that’s your only option,” Shaw says. “I’ve considered it. Even when I was first signed to the label, they talked about doing a gospel album. My third album might be a gospel album, I’m not sure.”

Shaw says the follow-up to This Is Ryan Shaw won’t be a gospel album, but it won’t be another collection dominated by covers, either.

“The next one is going to be pretty much all original,” he says. “The purpose of the first album was to establish me as a singer; hopefully the next album will establish me as a writer and as a more complete artist. There’s a possibility that there might be a few covers that I really love on the album, but they’ll be even more obscure than the stuff I covered on the first record.”

Since his album’s release last March, Shaw has toured the country as both a headliner and a support act. He’s opened for a variety of R&B, jazz, and blues artists, including John Legend, Buddy Guy, Joss Stone, and Los Lonely Boys. He’s even appeared at Lollapalooza.

Shaw says that even though “it’s more work to win over an audience when you’re opening for somebody,” he hasn’t met an audience yet that he couldn’t win over.

“There hasn’t been a bad show yet,” he says. “I think the strangest one was when we opened up for [jazz instrumental group] Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Their crowd is a different group of people, but they still love real music. When I first came out, it was like blank faces and crickets chirping. But halfway through the second song, they were with me. By the end of the show, they were going crazy.”

Shaw acknowledges that given the strong musical statement he made with his debut album, the industry has already labeled him as a soul singer. While he’s comfortable with the label, he’d like to establish a career in which he’s known as a singer who can handle any style of music.

“You go back to someone like Aretha Franklin – Aretha did two or three jazz albums, then she did the Rock Steady album, she did a little bit of everything. People just loved her. It wasn’t about the song, it was Aretha. No matter what Aretha was doing, people loved her and they knew what she brought to the table.”

“I think a great song is a great song whether it’s sung by a country artist, or a soul artist, or a rock ‘n’ roll artist,” he adds. “I think people love real music. I think what attracts people to what I do is my interpretation of it all. Not necessarily the song, but what I bring to the table.”

"Girl Power" Concert In Wildwood, NJ

Since opening in 1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has inducted only a handful of the influential girl groups of the 1950s and ’60s. On Saturday, July 7, 2007 original members of three of those groups — the Supremes, the Ronettes, and the Shirelles (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”) — performed along with the Angels (“My Boyfriend’s Back”) and the Dixie Cups (“Chapel of Love”) at the Girl Power concert at the Oceanfront Arena at the Wildwoods Convention Center.

In exclusive telephone interviews, Mary Wilson of the Supremes, and Nedra Talley Ross of the Ronettes talked about their careers, how the Girl Power concert came together, and recalled stories of performing in and around Atlantic City in the early ’60s.

Mary Wilson has the distinction of being the only Supreme who remained in the group from its beginning in 1959, when it was known as the Primettes, until it was dissolved in 1977. As a member of the Supremes, Wilson (along with Florence Ballard, Diana Ross, and later, Cindy Birdsong) enjoyed 12 U.S. No. 1 hits, including “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Stop! In the Name of Love” and “Baby Love.”

Wilson has never stopped performing, averaging over 100 appearances each year. Most recently, she has been playing a series of intimate club shows she dubbed “Mary Wilson Up Close.”

Wilson says the idea for the Girl Power show originated back in 2002 while she was working on a project that honored 12 different girl groups of the ’50s and ’60s, including the Ronettes, the Shirelles, the Angels, and the Dixie Cups, with commemorative postage stamps.

“We had the unveiling of the stamp collection at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland,” Wilson says. “So we had all the groups there, all the girls there, and we had a weekend of tremendous fun. We did a small concert where we did a few songs. We said it would be so great if we could do this more often, and since I had organized that particular event, everyone said, ‘OK Mary, you do it.’”

Original Ronette Nedra Talley Ross said the idea moved forward for her two years ago, when the Ronettes were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame at a ceremony held in Wildwood. Ross said that performances by the inductees that weekend turned into a friendly competition between the boy groups and girl groups, and made Ross realize that the time was right to take the show on the road.

“I think everyone’s at this stage in our lives where we’re like, ‘If you’re going to do it, do it now,’” she said.

While they had fewer hits than the Supremes, the Ronettes, featuring Ross and her cousins, Estelle Bennett and Veronica “Ronnie” Bennett (later Spector), may have had an even bigger stylistic influence on music. The multiracial New York City natives were young, stylish, and sexy. They wore long, matching hairstyles, heavy eye makeup and slit skirts. And they sang to the boys (“Be My Baby,” “Baby, I Love You”) instead of about them.

The Ronettes became known as the first “bad girls of rock ‘n’ roll,” which is ironic considering Ross walked away from the group in 1966 to become a wife and mother, and has been happily married for over 40 years. Today she is heavily involved with Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.

Ross says that at the time she didn’t realize how revolutionary the Ronettes were.

“But I did know that we were making an impression,” she says. “We stood out, because we weren’t the black group, we weren’t the white group — people didn’t know what we were, but everyone could relate to us and claim us as their own. We all dressed alike. We all had long hair. We wore skirts with slits, because we danced. People thought we were wearing the slits just to be sexy, but the truth was, the slits allowed us to dance.”

While the involvement of producer Phil Spector has often overshadowed the group, the Ronettes are finally being recognized for their contributions to popular music. In addition to being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last March, the group was honored by the Library of Congress when “Be My Baby” was added to the National Recording Registry the same month.

For the Wildwood show, Ross will sing lead, performing with daughter Heather Ross and two backing singers. It won’t be the first time Ross has sung lead for the Ronettes. When the group was signed as the opening act on the Beatles’ final U.S. tour in 1966, an insecure Phil Spector wouldn’t let Ronnie go on the road with the Fab Four, so Nedra took over lead vocals and another cousin, Elaine, was brought in to sing Nedra’s part.

Both Wilson and Ross recalled performing in Atlantic City in the early ’60s. Ross’s story involves local music legend and Atlantic City Weekly columnist, Jerry Blavat:

“Coming from New York City ... we regarded ourselves as good dancers,” she says. “We had just done Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, and it was fine, but it didn’t have what we considered great dancers. ... And then we went to do the Jerry Blavat Show, and all these kids — with Jerry leading the way as the host — had routines. They could really dance! We were like ‘Oh my gosh, they’re tearing it up!’ That show had a vitality that I’ll always remember. It really stuck in my head.”

Wilson remembers performing with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour at the Steel Pier.

“One of the things I’ll always remember about Atlantic City, was when we played the Steel Pier, there was only one way in and one way out,” she says. “At the end of the show, when we wanted to get back to the hotel, we’d have to walk all the way back through the Steel Pier. Many times we’d have to run because we’d have so many fans chasing us. We were like Pied Pipers — by the time we got to the entrance, we’d have hundreds of people following us.”

Besides her solo career, Wilson is involved in a wide variety of charitable and humanitarian causes. She says she would welcome a Supremes reunion with Diana Ross and Cindy Birdsong (original Florence Ballard died in 1976).

“If it were to come about in the right way, I would be more than willing to do it. In fact, I hope it will happen,” she says. “But I believe those things should happen with the best intentions, and everyone involved should want to do it. ... Now that we’re a lot older, and we’ve gone through our own personal trials and triumphs, maybe the time is right.”