Robert Cray
 Robert Cray's spent the '90s evolving from West Coast
bluesman to Memphis soul belter. So Cray's restrained guitar playing on his
first CD for Rykodisc--after his unhappy departure from his longtime label
Mercury--comes as no surprise. What's shocking is the utter perfection of his
emulation of the signature sounds of the classic Stax and Hi Records singles of
the '60s and early '70s. Cray's voice exhibits the delirious growl-to-falsetto
flights of a young Al Green on numbers like "What About Me,"
"Love Gone to Waste," and the prisoner-of-love weeper "Pardon."
But his arrangements--heavy on kick drum, fatback horn grooves, and organ
flourishes--retain a grit that Hi in particular lost over time. And when he
launches into a guitar solo like the probing corker that climaxes his take on
Willie Dixon's "Toll the Bells," Cray rekindles the influence of his
late mentor Albert Collins and reasserts himself as a torchbearer of stinging
blues. --Ted Drozdowski
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