Blog: A Deeper Shade Of Soul

One album I missed this spring is James Hunter's The Hard Way , a delightful piece of late 50's - early 60's inspired soul. I've gotten into it recently (thanks to a personal reminder from Southside Johnny ), and it's just one of those albums that makes it hard to repress a smile. Hunter is clearly a Sam Cooke fanatic, and much of the The Hard Way has a lightness to it that reminds me of some of Cooke's more pop feeling recordings. There's not a drop of pretension in this [...]