Linda Eder - Back to the Beach

There was a time when singer and Broadway star Linda Eder could stroll down Atlantic City's Boardwalk on a crowded summer evening and go unnoticed. In fact, it happened on a fairly regular basis in the mid 1980s. Back then, Eder was a recent transplant from Minneapolis, building a reputation and fan base performing her show four times a night, six nights a week at Harrah's.

In the years since, Eder's celebrity profile has risen considerably. In 1987, she tried out for the television talent show Star Search, and won a spot on the first episode of that show's 1988 season. She proved unbeatable for an unprecedented 12-week run. The Star Search appearances led to a record contract and her big break; she was cast as Lucy in a new musical version of Jekyll & Hyde.

The show debuted in 1990 at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas. In April 1997, Jekyll & Hyde made its way to Broadway. That year, Eder was nominated and won a Theater World Award for her performance as Lucy. Since then, she's appeared on stage in Beauty and the Beast, The Civil War and Camille Claudel, and has released eight solo albums, including her most recent, 2005's By Myself: The Songs of Judy Garland.

Eder has performed in Atlantic City numerous times since her lounge act days. While she considers herself a mid-level celebrity at best, her days of going unnoticed in a crowd have passed. In February 2006, she returned to perform two shows with singer and pianist Michael Feinstein at the Atlantic City Hilton.

"It's a new show — an idea that we've wanted to do for a while," Eder said at the time in an interview for Atlantic City Weekly. "We put it together last year and did five shows to try it out. It was so much fun, and the response was fantastic, so we've got a lot more booked."

Eder and Feinstein are on stage together for the entire show, with the exception of two short solo segments where each performs two or three songs apiece. The duo is accompanied by Eder's seven-piece touring band, under the direction of John Oddo.

Touted as an evening of "masterpieces from the American songbook," the show includes songs by legends like Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington, as well as more contemporary artists.

"It's everything from Steve and Eydie, to Sonny and Cher, to Joni Mitchell, to more current material," Eder says. "My definition of a standard is anything that is written well enough so that it stays around as the years go on. New standards are being created all the time."
Eder says she enjoys the variety afforded by successful careers as both a stage performer and recording artist. At this point in her life, however, family considerations have kept her from committing to another Broadway show.

"I want to do it again, but I'm not in a big rush," she says. "It's a wonderful experience and great fun, but it's also the most work. I know the hours that it involves. I have a six-and-a-half year-old son who's now in school, and I know that if I were in a show on Broadway, I really wouldn't see him that much. So I'm very tempered by that.

"There is a piece in the works being especially written for me that I really like, so we'll see…. We're progressing with that, but it would be at least two years before it would be ready to come to New York."

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.”

Seal With A "Kiss"

Seal, the British-born singer-songwriter of Brazilian and Nigerian heritage, burst on the music scene in 1991 with a self-titled album that presented a unique fusion of soul, folk, pop, dance and rock, and immediately brought him success on both sides of the Atlantic. Although he’s only released three albums since — six, if you count two live recordings and a 2004 hits collection — Seal continues to attract a large and intensely loyal international following.

Despite his relatively sparse recording output, the 44-year-old singer, whose real name is Sealhenry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel, has managed to remain in the public eye. He’s released enough new music to remind listeners of his distinctive soulful voice, including a Grammy-nominated cover of Burt Bacharach’s “Walk On By” on Best 1991 – 2004, and the song, “A Father’s Way” (from the film The Pursuit of Happyness), which received a 2006 Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song.

With a lean, muscular 6’4” frame, Seal’s sheer physical presence has always been enough for him to garner media attention. Growing up in the image-conscious MTV era, Seal has been savvy enough to take advantage of it. He might have gone into modeling, but was initially discouraged by the facial scars he carries as a result of a childhood bout with lupus. But when he decided on a performing career, Seal became convinced that the half-moon scars under his eyes were an omen of future stardom.

“I got really depressed about [the scars] at first, as you can understand,” he said in an interview with Rob Tannenbaum of Rolling Stone magazine. “Now I really like them. If I could design something, I don’t think I could do it better.”

He did design the rest of his look, which at one time featured long dreadlocks, but now sports a clean-shaven head.

“True beauty is internal and eternal — it doesn’t matter what’s only skin deep,” he has said.

Apparently, his view of female beauty tends to be more traditional. Seal dated supermodel Tyra Banks in the mid-90s, and married supermodel Heidi Klum in 2005. The couple has two children.

Seal began his performing career singing in London clubs and bars. He joined an English funk band called Push, which was successful enough to tour Japan in the mid-’80s. From there, Seal took advantage of his time abroad, immersing himself in a variety of musical cultures, and perhaps influencing his own eclectic style of pop music. While in Asia, he joined a Thailand-based blues band. After a short time with that group, he traveled throughout India on his own.

When he returned to England, Seal started collaborating with artists on the local dance music scene. He wrote and independently recorded a song called “Killer” with keyboardist Adamski. Its balance of dance and rock, coupled with Seal’s emotional singing and lyrics, took it to the top of the U.K. charts.

The song caught the attention of producer Trevor Horn (Tina Turner, Pet Shop Boys, Yes), who signed Seal to his ZTT label and produced his eponymous debut in 1991. The album was positively received by both critics and fans, and the singles “Crazy,” “Future Love Paradise” and a new version of “Killer” all performed well on the charts.

But it was Seal’s second album, also self-titled, that established him as one of pop music’s top artists of the ’90s. The 1994 album was also produced by Horn, and featured guest appearances by Joni Mitchell and Jeff Beck. It included the singles “Prayer for the Dying” and “Newborn Friend,” and received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. A third single, “Kiss From a Rose,” performed modestly when initially released, but later became a worldwide smash hit when it was featured in the film Batman Forever. “Kiss From a Rose” went on to win Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1996, and became Seal’s best known song.

Sales of 1998’s Human Being failed to match those of Seal’s first two albums, and the singer went through a difficult period, both personally and professionally. He had a falling out with Horn and left ZTT Records for Warner Brothers.

Seal returned to form for 2003’s Seal IV. Again produced by Horn, the album was a critical and commercial success, and included the singles “Get It Together,” “Waiting For You” and “Love’s Divine.”

In blog posts on Seal.com, his official Web site, Seal has talked about his new album (no, it's not called Seal V - it's called System) which hits the streets November 13, 2007. He says it will reflect a return to his roots as a club singer. Some of the song titles include “Amazing,” “System,” “Wedding Day” and “The Right Life.”

Hoping for a fresh sound, the album will be produced by Stuart Price, known for his work with Madonna, No Doubt, and Coldplay.

“The new record is really shaping up and is turning out to be much of a dance record,” Seal said in a recent post. “Over the years I’ve somehow become more known for my ballads, which I also love doing, but dance music has always been close to my heart. Make no mistake, there will also be a killer ballad or three on this record, but at this point in my life I really want to make something that is more dance-directed.”

Tom Jones Sheds His Lounge Singer Image

Tom Jones has always had an image problem. Even as far back as the late ’60s, when early hits like "It’s Not Unusual," "Delilah," "Help Yourself," and "What’s New Pussycat" sold millions of records, younger fans who knew Jones mainly from his ABC television variety show saw him as a throwback to the Dean Martin/Frank Sinatra-style singers their parents liked.

The hits kept coming in the ’70s, but the singer, whose on-stage gyrations would elicit screams (and sometimes undergarments) from the females in his audience, couldn’t shake the Las Vegas lounge singer label. Then, sometime in the ’80s, a funny thing happened — Tom Jones became cool.

Perhaps it was because Jones, born Thomas John Woodward in Pontypridd, South Wales, never took himself or his overwrought persona too seriously. Or maybe it had more to do with his undeniably powerful voice and a musical repertoire that included pop, rock, soul, R&B and country. In Britain, contemporary artists had started acknowledging Jones as an influence. "It’s Not Unusual" was re-released and became a hit again. In 1988, he collaborated with British techno-pop group The Art of Noise on a cover of Prince’s "Kiss." The song became Jones’s first worldwide Top 40 hit in more than 10 years, and the accompanying video won the “Breakthrough Video” MTV Award.

At age 66, Jones is still dealing with image problems. He may be older, but he’s far from an oldies act. These days, he has a harder time convincing American record companies than fans of that fact.

“With me and other entertainers of my age, unless you’ve been selling records continuously, record companies in this country are frightened to take a chance with you,” Jones says.

As an example, he points to his 1999 British release, Reload, a collection of collaborations with artists like Robbie Williams, the Pretenders, Barenaked Ladies, Van Morrison, and Simply Red covering songs like "Burning Down the House," "Lust for Life," and "Never Tear Us Apart." The Reload album sold more than 5 million copies worldwide, but was never released in the United States.

“I thought we were bound to do a deal with an American company, because it had been successful everywhere else,” Jones says. But still they came up with excuses. I was told that there were too many European artists who were not known in the States on the album. We did have offers, but they weren’t good enough. We didn’t feel that they were going to put enough effort behind the CD, and we just didn’t want to put it out for the sake of putting it out.”

As a compromise, Universal Records released Reloaded: Greatest Hits in 2003, a 19-song retrospective that included six tracks from Reload, and a mix of old and newer hits.

“Universal got behind it because of the classic hits that are on there, so I think it was a good way to introduce some of the newer things that I’d recorded that a lot of the American listeners hadn’t heard,” Jones says.

Jones continues to record albums that American fans have to buy as imports. His most recent are 2002’s Mr. Jones, which was produced by the Fugees’ Wyclef Jean, and 2004's Tom Jones and Jools Holland, a blues collection featuring the ex-Squeeze keyboard player. Recent releases by Paul Anka and Neil Diamond aside, among his contemporaries Jones’ continued productivity is a rarity.

He’s also forward-thinking when it comes to performing. He still sings his most popular older hits, but rather than live comfortably in the past, Jones usually showcases more recent material in his shows. He’s also not afraid to take risks. Name another 66-year-old performer with the gumption to open a show rapping to a bona fide hip-hop track (“Tom Jones International”) and look comfortable and sound good doing it.

“I like a lot of modern music,” he says. “I like a lot of new producers. So it’s something that I listen to. When I hear a great-sounding record, I want to know who produced it. That’s why I want to work with modern producers. That’s why I did a CD with Wyclef Jean.”

The Mr. Jones sessions also marked the first time in his 40-year career that Jones co-wrote some of his material.

“I need suggestions,” he admits. With Wyclef, he would suggest something, and then bring it out of me. He would say, ‘I’ve got an idea for a groove, an idea for a song.’ Then he would explain the concept to me and ask me to put it into words.”

Jones believes the key to his success is that he has never tried to emulate another singer, no matter what style of music he sings.

“I’ve been influenced by a lot of singers, but I’ve never tried to copy anybody,” he says. “When "It’s Not Unusual" first came out, it was being played in this country on black radio stations, because they thought I was black. I wasn’t trying to sound like any of the great blues or soul singers. I was doing it in my own way.” Because of his eclectic taste in music, Jones has always enjoyed working with other artists.

“When I had my TV show on ABC in the late ’60s, early ’70s, ABC realized that I could do all kinds of music, and I could do duets with all styles of music artists,” he says. “ABC was pushing for more middle-of-the-road people, and I was always pushing for rock singers. I got my way, because the TV show was successful. So the idea of doing collaborations with different artists started then.”

Jones says that R&B singer Usher and rap star Nelly have expressed an interest in working with him. “It could happen,” he says. “I could do a CD like Reload with American artists. Who knows, it might even get a record company interested.”