Rather than
being a man ahead of his time, Ryan Shaw is a man behind his time. He’s a
classic soul singer, who probably would have been a big star had he been
working in the 1960s. He’s also an incredibly dynamic live performer – after
the release of this album, I caught him at a pre-Preakness outdoor show in
Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood, an outdoor show at Columbia’s Lake
Kittamaqundi (on my birthday no less), the WXPN summer music festival in
Philadelphia, and a little later at the Birchmere opening for James Hunter.
Shaw wrote
my favorite song on the album (“Over & Done”), co-wrote two others (“We Got
Love” and “Nobody”), and covered three well-known R&B tunes – the classic “Lookin’
For A Love”, which he makes his own; Wilson Pickett’s “I Found A Love”; and
Jackie Wilson’s “I’ll Be Satisfied”. He also did some older but obscure soul
tracks, most notably “Working On A Building Of Love”, a Holland-Dozier-Holland
song that could have been a big hit for the Jackson 5 back in the day.
This Is Ryan Shaw got good reviews and a Grammy
nomination, but didn’t do much sales-wise. Unfortunately, for 2012’s Real Love Shaw abandoned the canny mix
of covers and a few originals that made his debut such a treat, co-writing 9 of
the 12 tracks, only one of which (the concluding “Morning Noon & Night”) is
particularly noteworthy. Appropriately, he also played Stevie Wonder in Motown: The Musical on Broadway.
Favorite
tracks:
Working On A
Building Of Love
Lookin’ For
A Love
We Got Love
I Am Your
Man
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