US Sophisticated Soul CD, 2015
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1) This Song Is for You 3:39
2) Never Say No to You 3:48
3) Till U Come Back to Me 3:57
4) Let's Get Closer 5:39
5) Deep as the Ocean 4:43
6) Run Away Fall in Love 4:51
7) It's Real 3:58
8) Saving All My Love 3:42
9) Does Your Momma Know About Me 4:23
Chocolate Drops is an apt title
for Will Downing’s 18th studio album. Will Downing: “I have
a very dark complexion and when women hear me sing they say ‘it’s like dark
chocolate, it melts in your mouth’. They say the music does that to them. I
don’t understand it, I just go with it” (laughing).
Will’s very first solo album, the
self-titled Will Downing was released 27 years ago (www.soulexpress.net/willdowning_discography.htm
), but this native of Brooklyn, New York, had made a reputation for himself as
a sought-after session singer already in the mid-1980s. “I’ve done projects
prior to my first album, but under different names. I used to work with a
producer named Arthur Baker. He had his own label, and we would put out
all these 12-inch records under assumed name, like we had a record out under
the name Wally Jump Jr & the Criminal Element. I was the lead
vocalist for that group.” Wally aka Wilfred Downing had such releases as Tighten
Up (I Just Can’t Stop Dancin’), Private Party, Jump Back and Turn Me
Loose between 1986 and ’88, and still in the 90s they released an 11-track Best
Of CD.
“Then we had another group called R.T.
& the Rockmen Unlimited, and I was the lead vocalist for that.” Their
single, (I Want to Go to) Chicago, evolved even into a small hit
in 1986. “There was a movie called The Goonies (in 1985), and they put
a soundtrack out. Arthur had a song on the soundtrack, and we made a group
called The Goon Squad. I probably had about six or seven singles out
under different names before I put out my first solo record.” The song on the
soundtrack was called Eight Arms to Hold You, and – needless to say –
all those tracks above feature fast-tempo, post-disco house music.
IT’S REAL
Chocolate Drops is for the
most part produced by Will and Chris “Big Dog” Davis. “We’ve been
working together probably on the last five records.” Customarily, Will uses a
live rhythm section, but real drums are used only on five tracks out of nine.
“The radio scene here is very machine-driven and orientated. If you don’t have
something similar that’s already been played on the radio, you’re not going to
be played. It’s just something you have to conform to. I would have loved to
have live drums on the whole album, but at the same time it’s a business and I
have to compete with anything else that’s out there.”
Will uses different methods in cutting a
song in the studio. “I’ve done it every way on this record. Saving All My
Love for You – we cut all that at one time. On some other songs, like I
use to say, we frankensteined it together. We did the basic track first, then
cut the vocals and then put live instruments on top of it. There’s no pattern
to the way I did the record, but it sounds – at least I hope it sounds – like one
take.”
There are two songs that were co-written
and produced by Shedrick Mitchell. Run Away/Fall in Love is a
mellow, atmospheric downtempo number, even slightly jazzy, while It’s Real is
a tender, late-night love song. “This is the first time I’m working with
Shedrick. He’s an excellent writer, producer and piano player. We actually
have a mutual friend, who’s been trying to get us together for years. Unfortunately
our mutual friend passed away, and the first time we met was at his funeral.”
DOES YOUR MOMMA KNOW ABOUT ME
There are three familiar songs from the
past, and – as always – Will renders these covers in his distinguished,
intimate and sophisticated style. Atlantic Starr recorded a pretty
serenade named Let’s Get Closer in 1982. “I did that for a strange
reason. One of the guys in my band, Mike Ham, played the saxophone solo
on that song. He just came up to me one day and said ‘I’ve always heard you
singing this song’, so we just did it based on that.”
Saving All My Love for You was
originally recorded by Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis, Jr. in 1978, but
it was immortalized by Whitney Houston seven years later. “One day we
went to a sound-check before a concert and Chris Davis just started playing it
while we were warming up, and everybody in the band joined. It sounded so good
that we went in the next week and cut it.”
Will comes up with a very slow and
refined version of Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers ’68 hit, Does
Your Momma Know About Me. “It’s a song that I’ve always loved. Actually Phil
Perry and I have been competing as to who’s going to record it first.
We’ve always talked about it – it’s a great song, a great melody and a great subject
matter. I guess I beat him to it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you heard him
doing his version of it on his next album.”
THIS SONG IS FOR YOU
Will and Chris Davis not only produced
but also wrote together the first three songs on the CD. Till U Come Back is
a melancholy, slow song, whereas there’s a livelier mid-tempo groove on Never
Say No to You. “That was the first single, and maybe as a follow-up we’ll
go with This Song is for you. It’s a song that people seem to be
gravitating to. The meaning behind that one is that you find a lot of people
here in the world that are lonely. One thing about social media is that it
gives you a false glimpse at everything. You appear to be more popular than
you are. When you go home, you may be alone, you may be having rough time at
work, you may be a single parent. I wrote that song to say that this song here
is for you.” Besides this gentle mid-pacer, which indeed has hit potential,
there’s still Deep as the Ocean, another light mid-tempo song, on which Regina
Carter plays a beautiful violin solo.
Unfortunately there are no overseas
concert plans for Will in the near future. “In the summertime here they have a
lot of festivals and you don’t get that much time on stage, you may get 45-60
minutes. I have 18 records out, so we do the best of the best, what people
want to hear, and a lot of times we don’t have time to introduce new music.
We’ve introduced some of the new songs only in one concert. Basically people
want to hear my hits over here like I Try, A Million Ways, Wishing on a
Star, I Go Crazy and Send for Me. When I come overseas, there’ll be
a whole other playlist. Overseas people like A Love Supreme, In My Dreams...
some of the older stuff.”
“Normally on stage I have seven persons:
bass, drums, keyboard, guitar, the background singers and myself. The
promoters overseas want me to come over and do a concert, but they don’t want
me to bring my band. They want me to play with a band wherever I’m going, and
you have to see the show to understand that it’s not that easy. It’s a little
more complex than ‘okay guys, learn these songs, I’m coming over and we’re
going to go over these songs tomorrow’.”
FAVOURITES
When asked about personal favourites
among own recordings, Will not only goes many years back to the very beginning,
but also values his recent output. “I was really satisfied with the very first
record, Will Downing (1988). It was a little bit of everything – jazz,
house, ballads... Also A Dream Fulfilled (1991) was a huge record, and
one of my favourite records; and Euphoria (2014), the record before this
one, and now this new one.”
Will’s biggest musical influences include
Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and Al Jarreau,
and he names some credible newcomers, too. “Jazmine Sullivan has a
couple of records out and I love her voice. There’s a guy named Devon
Howard, and he has almost a Michael Jackson kind of sound. One
vocalist that sings with me, a young lady named Carol Riddick, has a
solo record out (Love Phases), which I really love. She’s an incredible
vocalist.”
Chocolate Drops has been on
the market for about three months now. “So far, so good. The music industry
is very strange now. People aren’t buying anything. But what the market is,
it’s been well received. As a whole I’m excited about the record. I’m happy
with the performances on there, and I honestly think that this is one of my
best. I always go back and forth between kind of contemporary jazz, with a
little hint of traditional jazz, and r&b. The last album before this one
was more jazz than soul. This is definitely more r&b based record and I’m
happy with the way it came out.” (www.willdowning.com;
interview conducted on June 23, 2015; acknowledgements to Ashley Scott).