STAN MOSLEY - SOUL MAN’S BLUES

  With Stan Mosley we go a long way back together. He told me that I was the first reporter to interview him right after the release of his Standing Tall EP in 1995. Since then we’ve talked many times and, if interested, you can read his complete bio in his own words at Stan Mosley Interview | Soul Express.

  Now he has released his 11th album on Eddie Stout’s Dialtone Records out of Austin, Texas (http://dialtonerecords.com). Eddie started out as a bass player in the Dynaflows in the 1970s, played in many other bands after that, established Pee Wee Records and finally in 1999 Dialtone Records – “Ambassador of Texas blues” – which has by now released over thirty albums by such artists as Little Joe Washington, Barbara Lynn, Mitty Collier, Cornell Dupree, Birdlegg, Texas Eastside Kings and Crystal Thomas, to name just a few.

THE EASTSIDE KINGS FESTIVAL

Eddie Stout: “I knew about Stan from the Malaco days, but I had no idea he was living in Houston until I saw the video he did at the Porretta Soul Festival in Italy. So, I tracked him down and called to talk about getting him to play at the Eastside Kings Festival (https://www.eastsidekingsfest.com). The Eastside Kings Festival for the last ten years has been taking up a lot of my time.” Stan Mosley was born in Chicago, Illinois, but has been living in Houston, Texas, for the past seven years.

  Eddie: “I produced a music video to help promote the Eastside Kings Festival. On the video there were Eugene “Hideaway” Bridges, Ernie Johnson, Mac Mcintosh, Trudy Lynn, Bobby “Mercy” Oliver and Stan Mosley. I am in constant connection with my two old soul brothers in Japan, P-Vine’s Kochi and Higurashi. As soon as they saw the video of Stan, I could hear them yell all the way from Japan to Texas ‘STAN MOSLEY, this would make for a great sounding record.’ Stan’s voice is better than ever and looks good on stage. I hopped in my car and drove to Houston and talked with Stan about grooves for the record and the backing band. Stan was all in to it, so we were both on the same page.”

  Stan Mosley: “Eddie asked ‘Stan, have you ever done a blues album? You have the kind of voice to make a really good blues album.’ We talked about it, I agreed to do it, he gave me the deposit, and the rest is history.”  The album was first released first on P-Vine in Japan in December 2022, and the official release date for U.S. edition is January the 10th.

THE MUSICIANS

  Eddie: “I felt like I was in the song Tighten Up or Memphis Soul Stew. Putting together a studio band from the cats here in Austin is easy: groove on the bass by Mike Archer – he has a nice low end that can walk - Heavy Organ player Anthony Farrell from the band the Greyhounds, add half pint of the Moeller Brothers, throw in some Texas Horns and sprinkle some Crystal Thomas, and laid on top Stan Mosley. Wow, that’s the makings of a heavy groove - Served up Hot.”

  The album was recorded at Wire Studio in Austin, Texas, in May and June of 2022. Eddie: “We recorded live in the studio, with Harmony guitar, Kay bass, an old B-3 and some vintage amps and drums. This is how we start. We do love the old tone the cats used to get on Stax and at Atlantic, and the Detroit sound from the 60s – we were looking at this sound but, using Texas Blues cats to translate the sound into what you are hearing now, to cool. Stan put together some originals. In the studio it was my part to make sure of the tones and all the changes within the songs make sense and mixing.”

  As listed above, the key musicians are the Moeller Brothers with Johnny on guitar and Jason on drums, the Texas Horns – Kaz Kazanoff on tenor sax, John Mills on baritone sax and Al Gomez on trumpet – and Anthony on organ and Mike on bass. Eddie produced the set.

NO SOUL, NO BLUES

  The title of the album – No Soul, No Blues (DT0032) - is somewhat misleading because it actually contains both soul and blues, although blues is the dominating element this time. Stan: “Eddie Stout chose that title. I actually wanted it to be called Soul Man’s Blues. We talked about it for a minute and we just decided to go ahead and keep the title that he had. Eddie has a vision for the CD, and I listen to him. I agreed to do everything that he wanted me to do, like the song selection. The majority of the songs he selected. The only four songs he did not select for me are the ones that I wrote.” Incidentally, the Japanese edition has two songs that are missing from the U.S. pressings: the inspirational This Train and a blues romp called You Need Love, written by Willie Dixon and best known as Muddy Waters’ 1962 single.

  Stan’s preceding album, Resurrection (Stan Mosley: Resurrection | Soul Express), was released in 2018. Stan: “It’s still selling a few every now and then, but it’s not doing a whole lot of anything, because I didn’t have that promotion behind it. With this new CD I’ll be able to generate a little bit more promotion. I’m not affiliated with those people on Resurrection anymore. Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you want them to work out and something different will happen, like Eddie calling me.”

  Eddie Stout plans on releasing more material on Dialtone in the near future. Eddie: “I’m working on recording a 45rpm for Orange Jefferson with the band I play in, Eastside Kings, the same backing band that is on the Eastside Kings CD (DT0027) and the Crystal Thomas 45rpm. I have buried myself into working on the foundation and festival on September the 9th and 10th in 2023. Before that there’s the Eastside Kings Festival Tour at the Montpellier Blues Festival in France on July 20, 21 and 22.”

WHAT YOU NEED

  Stan’s new set opens with a funky and rocky mid-tempo cover of Bill Coday’s 1972 single called I’m Back to Collect, and the second track offers the “title tune”, a gritty and driving jam with long guitar and organ solos called Blues Man (No Soul, No Blues), written by Stan himself. Stan: “If you listen to the song, it’ll kind remind you of the old Stax. It’s got that kind of feel to it. It feels good. I’m going use this song as an introduction to my live performances, when I come on stage.”

  The horn-driven Losing Hand is another aggressive and big-voiced mid-tempo blues number, which Little Milton first released sixty years ago. “I was like ten years old, when that song came out.” The arrangement faithfully follows Little Milton’s original Checker release. “I did that intentionally. I wanted to pay homage to Little Milton. I wanted to do his song as close to him as possible.”

  What You Need is a slowly swaying song, and again Johnny Moeller plays a long guitar solo in the middle. “The Moeller brothers wrote the music and I wrote the lyrics. Those guys are great. When I first listened to the music, it just sounded so good that I started humming. When I began to hum, those lyrics came to me.” The Moeller Brothers were born in Fort Worth, Texas, and they are involved in many rock-blues projects since the mid-80s. Johnny has played in numerous groups including the Fabulous Thunderbirds and has released three solo albums.

  On a heavily hammering mid-tempo song called Stomp, Stan has Crystal Thomas as his singing partner. Originally this song appeared on Wilson Pickett’s CD in 1999 titled It’s Harder Now, and it was produced and co-written with Wilson by Jon Tiven. “When Eddie gave me these songs to learn, and I listened to Stomp, I said ‘I’m not singing this.’ I didn’t like the song. But then I said ‘let me do it as a duet’, we did it and it worked. We had a ball in the studio recording that song.”

RIGHT NEXT DOOR

  Crystal Thomas appears again on a fast and funky revival of the Temptations’ #1 soul hit in 1969, I Can’t Get next to You. “I did the arrangement on that, too. We did it the way the Temptations did it, and I said ‘let me once again make a duet and when we get towards the end we can use the Al Green arrangement. It’ll make the song sound even better.’ We put that Al Green feel to it in the back of it, and it sounds great.”

  The mid-tempo Right Next Door (Because of Me) is a restrained, almost tender song. Its writer, Dennis Walker, produced it on Robert Cray for his Strong Persuader LP in 1986. “It’s laid-back. Eddie Stout thought that I would be able to do that song. Now you got to remember that those days I was out on a soul circuit and I even hadn’t heard of Robert Cray. When we did the song, the Moeller Brothers had to kind of instruct me on where I was going with it. I was singing it completely different. I wasn’t feeling the song. Jason Moeller took me inside of the control room and he was talking to me about my timing. The music was wonderful, but my timing was off. I took the song home, listened to it, rehearsed it and when I went back there and did it again, that’s what you get right there on the record.”

  There are numerous songs under the title of I Smell a Rat, and Howlin’ Wolf released his funky and busily rolling interpretation in 1971 on Chess. “I probably heard those songs on the radio. They didn’t mean anything to me then, but now that I’ve had the opportunity to listen to them again and record them, they have a different meaning to me.”

CHANGE OF HEART

  Stan’s own song, Change of Heart, is a nice and infectious toe-tapper. “I thought it was probably the best song on there. It kind of has the feel of ‘if I was to sing a song like Tyrone Davis, how would I do it and what would I sing about.’ So I sang about the condition of the world as it is today. The world is in turmoil and we have to have a change of heart. And that starts from within. Again those words came to my head, when I was inside of that studio. I just began to sing and these were the words that came out of my head and my heart.” This critic agrees with Stan: the best song on the set.

  Deep soul fans fondly remember the B-side to Tyrone Davis’ first big hit in 1968, Can I Change My Mind. Called A Woman Needs to Be Loved, this powerful rendition was still re-released as an A-side in 1975. Now Stan revives it in a highly emotional way. “Eddie chose that song. We changed the key, because it was a little high for me. And that band is great – the Texas Horns and the Moeller Brothers. It kind of reminded me of the Muscle Shoals Band in the sense that you were actually there in the studio with them, live.”

  The concluding song, a slow blues called Undisputed Love, is again written by Stan himself. “If I were to write a blues song for someone like Cicero Blake, it would be that song.” Eddie Stout adds that “I came up with making the song a slow blues with a Part Time Lover turnaround. That’s the stuff I do, and Stan is natural at his blues groove.”

  Stan: “Now I’m doing a lot of exercise. My plan and my desire is to do a lot of touring now. I’m going to do what I haven’t done in a while, and that’s to be out there physically so people can see me. And I intend to be everywhere.”

(Interview conducted on December 30, 2022; acknowledgement to Stan Mosley and Eddie Stout).

© Heikki Suosalo