Rod Stewart interprets soul classics on new album

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Rod Stewart brings a splash of color to the staid surroundings of the Beverly Hills Hotel. He's wearing a blue striped shirt, a white business suit jacket with thick red trim and blue Converse slip-ons -- a look that combines nautical and vaudeville, which seems perfectly fitting for Stewart, the perpetual showman.
After completing a 20-city North American tour earlier this year, Stewart returned to recording and made the album he says he's been waiting his entire life to create. "Soulbook," a collection of classic soul songs from the '60s and '70s, will come out October 27 on J Records.
It's a natural next step after recording standards for his four-album "Great American Songbook" series. Those four albums have sold nearly 9 million copies combined, according to Nielsen SoundScan, since the first was released in 2002, and the 2006 "Still the Same ... Great Rock Classics of Our Time" sold 724,000. A "Songbook" boxed set has sold 89,000 copies.
"Soulbook" features duets with Mary J. Blige (on "You Make Me Feel Brand New") and Jennifer Hudson ("Let It Be Me") as well as two tracks featuring the original performers: "Tracks of My Tears" with Smokey Robinson and "My Cherie Amour" with Stevie Wonder. Al Schmitt, Sam Cooke's original producer and engineer, engineered the album.
"I couldn't keep putting it off," Stewart says. "I was very frightened of doing it, because as I say in the liner notes, these are the guys I looked up to and admired all my life. It was a big step."
Billboard: Of the many classics in this genre, how did you pick which songs to sing?
Rod Stewart: It was like the "Great American Songbook" (albums). We argued, shouted, pushed, fought and then came up with a good compromise. We tried to stay away from the ones that are really often on the radio, like ("Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" and "When a Man Loves a Woman" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." I think we've come up with a good collection.
Billboard: Did you choose any tracks based on what kind of vocal spin you could put on them?
Stewart: As a vocalist, you never know what you're going to sing until you put the headphones on and the microphone is in front of you. I even surprised myself sometimes. On "Rainy Night in Georgia," I changed the melody a little bit but I didn't lose sight of the original. It's never preplanned -- I guess that's why it's called "soul singing."
Billboard: And you obviously have a personal connection to many of these songs.
Stewart: I think "Just My Imagination" has a connection with me because it was the same year as "Maggie May" was a hit -- 1971 -- so that one hits home.
Billboard: It's great that Al Schmitt was involved. It makes it all come full circle.
Stewart: I've met Al before -- he did some of the "American Songbook." But when I sit next to him at a desk, I feel like putting my arms around him because that's as near as I'll get to Sam Cooke. I never, obviously, met Sam Cooke, and I never saw him live. I saw Otis (Redding) once, I've seen James Brown, and I've seen Jackie Wilson. It was fabulous seeing Otis perform -- I had tears in my eyes. It's funny in those days, because it was called the Soul Revue and they would come over (to Britain) in the late '60s and Otis would come on and sing 15 to 20 minutes maximum, and then Carla Thomas for 20 minutes max, and then Wilson Pickett would only do 20 minutes.
Billboard: How important was it for you to change the arrangements of these songs?
Stewart: On some of them, I said we have to change it, or we wouldn't do it at all, but some of the songs won't be changed. On "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," that's set in stone. You can't do that another way. Or "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted." It won't work. For lack of a better word, they won't bend.
Source reuters.com