LP #18 This Is Ryan Shaw (2007)

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:

Over & Done

Working On A Building Of Love

Lookin’ For A Love

We Got Love

I Am Your Man