A native of New Orleans, Aaron Neville is probably best known for his work as part of The Neville Brothers throughout the \u201860s, \u201870s and \u201880s, during which time they amassed a great reputation for their authentic and versatile recordings. Aaron\u2019s beautiful high tenor was always a highlight and one of \u2013 if not the \u2013 group\u2019s strongest weapon. Up until the \u201890s, Neville had only released two solo albums as he was always loyal to his band of brothers, but he found major success when he ventured out on his own to guest on other artists\u2019 recordings, singing duets and recording songs for movie soundtracks.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Two of these duets (\u201cDon\u2019t Know Much\u201d and \u201cAll My Life\u201d) he recorded with Linda Ronstadt for her 1989 solo LP, Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind,<\/i> which saw the pair win a Grammy for their wonderful performance on \u201cDon\u2019t Know Much.\u201d Neville also scored world-wide chart success with his 1991 version of The Main Ingredient\u2019s \u2018Everybody Plays The Fool.\u201d In recent years, Neville has kept busy recording everything from gospel albums to Christmas albums, as well as the obligatory standards album (seriously, who hasn\u2019t recorded one of these at one time or another?).\u00a0 <\/p>\n
January 2013 saw Neville relies one of his longest held dreams, as he finally delivered a full-length covers albums full of his favorite doo-wop songs. Don Was and Keith Richards produced My True Story<\/i>, and both played and sang backup on the record to great effect. Heartbreaker Benmont Tench was on board from the get-go and eventually rallied his troops, including Tom Petty, to lend a hand as well.\u00a0 Neville\u2019s brother Art also played on one of the tracks and the rest of the recording duties were handled with delicate care by some of the best session guys around. I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again, these projects live and die by the song selection process and how those selected tracks work for the artist(s) recording them. <\/p>\n
In that regard, My True Story<\/i> is a winner because Neville had been singing some of these songs for years on the road and to himself throughout his career. I\u2019m just not sure that his restrained, almost too<\/i> careful vocals work for all of these songs, and sometimes I think maybe a more vigorous approach would have been more effective and offered some variance among the twelve tracks. Anyway, that\u2019s not a major gripe because for the most part everything here works just fine and Neville\u2019s golden voice still belies his seventy-two years, which is quite remarkable in itself. One of the strongest tracks here is the opener \u201cMoney Honey,\u201d on which we get some great doo-wop vocals and a fantastic guitar solo.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The most ambitious song on the record is a slow and tender reading of The Ronettes\u2019 mammoth number one single \u201cBe My Baby,\u201d which in my opinion was the best song Phil Spector ever produced. Richards offers some great backing vocals and Neville does his best to get into the heart of the song, but I\u2019m still not sure that it works as well as it should have. \u201cTears On My Pillow\u201d and \u201cUnder The Boardwalk\u201d work really well and are among the album\u2019s finest moments, as is a wonderful reading from Neville on \u201cTing A Ling;\u201d his voice really shines on that one. My favorite song here, though, is the album\u2019s closer, which is just a perfect rendition of \u201cGoodnight My Love (Pleasant Dreams),\u201d a great way to close out the album. <\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to mark this one higher than I have because the playing and production is so beautifully managed, but for some reason I just don\u2019t think I have got as much out of it as I expected. That\u2019s not to take away from the fact that My True Story<\/i> is clearly a very good record and one of Neville\u2019s finest moments from his brilliant career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":31755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9307],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-43467","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-aaron-neville","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43467"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}