Barbara Carr Savvy Woman

		CDS Records

BARBARA CARR "Savvy Woman"

**NEW Review bottom of page**

Ms. Barbara Carr is one of the most talented and respected singers in the Soul & Blues world with a recording history that dates back to work with the legendary Chess Records. Since then she’s amassed a history of hits in the Contemporary Blues & Southern Soul genres. This new set is the album fans and critics have been longing for. The real Barbara with real instruments. For the first time in a long time Barbara delivers an album that befits her voice. Produced by Clarence Dobbins and Roy Roberts, “Savvy Woman”, delivers the goods like the current smash “It’s Only You”, already burning up on the “Carolina Beach” market. But Classic Soul in the Atlantic Records mold (“After She’s Gone”), ripping 12-bar Blues (“Number Two”, “How Long”) to Memphis-minded Staxy Soul (“The Heart You Break”, “Don’t Put The Cart Before The Horse”) is her bread and butter.

Track List

Savvy Woman / The Heart You Break / How Long / After She’s Gone / Don’t Put The Cart Before The Horse / It’s Only You / Number Two / Tonight Your Love Belongs To Me / No Getting Over Me / Blue Collar Man

Blues Critic CD Review:

Barbara Carr "Savvy Woman" (CDS Records) LISTEN

by Steven Alvarez

**** Ms. Barbara Carr is one of the most talented and respected singers in the Soul & Blues world with a recording history that dates back to work with the legendary Chess Records. Since then she’s amassed a history of hits in the Southern Soul genre, often with colorful titles like "Bone Me Like You Own Me", "If The Lord Keeps The Thought Of You Out Of My Head, I'll Keep Your Booty Out Of My Bed". This new effort seems designed to transcend that cheeky material and showcase her vocals and "savvy" persona. (Still, the funny "Number Two" will satisfy those who like that mischievous Koko Taylor-like bawdiness!)

So, "Savvy Woman" may be the album many fans and critics have been longing for. After years and much great music with Memphis' Ecko Records, some have complained she should record with "real" instruments. Produced by Clarence Dobbins and Roy Roberts, “Savvy Woman”, delivers the goods like the current smash “It’s Only You”, already burning up on the “Carolina Beach” market and the American Blues Network. But Classic Soul in the Atlantic Records mold (“After She’s Gone”), ripping 12-bar Blues (“Number Two”, “How Long”) to Memphis-minded Staxy Soul (“The Heart You Break”, “Don’t Put The Cart Before The Horse”) is her bread and butter.Real horns, organ, drums, etc.. Great horn arrangements and stellar vocals make "The Heart You Break" and the ballad "After She's Gone" especially stand out.
The title cut gives a lesson on how "to keep your man", letting them inexperienced girls know how to play their cards right: "Some girls use their sex appeal/They think it help keep their man/But I got something (else) they never had/Something they just can't understand". She proceeds to explain how to use that sex appeal to the greatest advantage. It's all about timing baby! Later in the song she sings: "Some men are like little boys/For what they want they are a slave" And if you give them want they want too quickly "they don't behave". LOL. So true. Barbara, you are quite the woman indeed and this is the year/album you deserve to get you the propers you deserve.

Daddy B. Nice's New CD Reviews

August 16, 2009:

BARBARA CARR: Savvy Woman (CDS) Four Stars **** Distinguished effort. Should please old fans and gain new.

Savvy Woman is a fine album--quite possibly the best Barbara Carr has ever done. And I admire what CDS Records has done for Barbara Carr, presenting one of Southern Soul's most overlooked divas in a state-of-the-art production: "Real horns, real B-3," (whatever that is) "a real rhythm section--first class all the way," as Dylann DeAnna writes in the fine liner notes.

The first time I played the album, I kept marveling at the fresh horn charts and even livelier back-up choruses, identifying this one and that one with this or that soul hit from yesteryear, although after a couple of listenings the songs gradually took on their own identities and those references dissolved, leaving me with a lingering appreciation and a vague feeling of deja vu.

But Barbara's core audience may be taken aback by how much the scintillating arrangements expose her unadorned vocal style, in the past so often buried in the fuzz and buzz of more tawdry and bawdy Southern Soul vehicles.

Let's talk about that style. On a certain kind of raucous and irreverent song (such as her classic, "Footprints On The Ceiling"), Barbara's trademark, strafed-and-striated vocals mesh perfectly with the subject matter.

But on the astoundingly crisp and lavishly produced set pieces producers Clarence Dobbins and Roy Roberts (with a guest cameo by the renowned Harrison Calloway) assemble for her, Carr's vocals stand out stark and naked in their simplicity--sometimes working, sometimes not--like a country rube in front of a concert hall filled with tuxedoes and designer dresses, or like straightforward Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington," filibustering in front of a bunch of jaded and skeptical politicians.

The title track, "Savvy Woman," epitomizes these issues. Barbara sounds hoarse, like she smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. She sounds like one of those seedy bar-stool women, weathered and vulgar, that male saloon patrons in search of companionship scope out instantly as infertile territory--unless it's five minutes before closing time.

Understand, this is not a bad thing. In the topsy-turvy world of Southern Soul, it's a mark of distinction. If Shirley Brown's singing, for example, can be compared to a velvet rope, then Barbara Carr's singing can be likened to a tree-trimmer's or dock-worker's rope: coarse, thick, strong and harsh.

Like many of the sixties-vintage soul hits that the album's arrangements recall, "Savvy Woman" has a pop melody with which Carr may be a bit uncomfortable, but as she proceeds through the CD's tracks, her confidence increasingly brims over with an intensity that you won't find on any other contemporary album.

"The Heart You Break," for example, is a blues-based tune with a vintage Aretha Franklin arrangement, and Carr responds to the material with a relish not often heard since the heyday of Franklin, Thomas and Peebles.

"How Long" is a duet with Roy Roberts, who also partners with Barbara on the achingly-beautiful (but Carr-rough) "It's Only You." "After She's Gone" is pure Otis Redding territory, which Barbara slips into as comfortably as Otis ever did.

"Don't Put The Cart Before The Horse" finds Carr in effortless form, shouting out the lyrics in the vibrato-less style that you either love or hate. If you love the blues, you love it, as you do the foot-stomping "Number Two."

"Tonight Your Love Belongs To Me" has a country-western feel to it, and "No Getting Over Me" is a great blast from the past.

"Blue Collar Man" concludes the disc with a new and notable original tune by the worthy Southern Soul songwriter John Cummings. As the title suggests, it's a perfect vehicle for Barbara Carr.

CDS Records gambled in catering to the "classy" side of Barbara Carr, (no double-entendre Southern Soul, no X-rated lyrics), but on the whole--and as a whole--this album works.

It delivers a fresh take on vintage soul, and thanks to Barbara Carr's unassailable blues and Southern Soul identity, it comes off as organic and real, without the feeling of tentativeness and imitativeness that conspires against the majority of so-called neo-soul and nu-soul.

In fact, if the Southern Sould community doesn't respond to this CD, the true mission of this album may be as an "ambassador"--a bridge--from Southern Soul to the neo-soul and blues worlds where Southern Soul needs to look for its growing audience.

--Daddy B. Nice VISIT HERE for more reviews