NEW YORK (Conqueroo/ www.conqueroo.com) - Ellis Hooks has completed a brand new Nashville-recorded album that will be released on August 9 on Evidence Records. Godson of Soul is a groove-oriented album featuring a few Nashville notables including Steve Cropper (who co-wrote 'Was it Something I Said?' with Hooks and producer Jon Tiven);
Memphis Horns trumpeter Wayne Jackson; superstar drummer Chester Thompson; and country legend Marty Brown, who sings a duet with Hooks on 'Chainsaw,' a song they wrote together. In addition, an answering-machine message that
Bobby Womack once left for Hooks' producer finds its way onto the album.
Godson of Soul was produced in Nashville by noted producer and songwriter Jon Tiven, who has produced all of Ellis' CDs to date.
'The title tells it all,' explains Hooks, 'If there was any confusion before, I think it's pretty direct on this record. There are very few legit soul artists left in this world, and I'm proud to be one of them.'
Producer Tiven has this to say about Hooks: 'With Ellis, what you see and hear is what he is. There is no pretension, no role-playing, no dress-up time at the O.K. Corral. He is the Great Lost Legendary Soul Singer, the son that Otis and Tina never had, and he can't help himself.'
Last year's U.S. debut album, Uncomplicated on Artemis Records, received resounding critical acclaim. The New York Times' Jon Pareles wrote, 'When he gets riled up, as in ‘Can't Take This No More,' or jubilant, as in the album's title song (‘Uncomplicated') and the mambo-gospel rocker ‘The Hand of God,' he testifies like a master.'
No Depression observed: 'And while it's his voice that grabs you, Hooks is a solid songwriter with a natural sense for the great pop hook, the very thing that distinguished the great soul singers of the 60s.' And Paste magazine cited: 'Hooks has one of the most original voices to come out of R&B since the heyday of the great
Memphis soul scene . . . he writes songs that resonate deeply in the broken recesses of the human heart.'
Ellis Hooks was born just outside of Mobile,
Alabama to an African-American sharecropper and his Cherokee bride, and was brought up on the music of Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and
James Brown that his 12 older brothers and sisters played around the house. He ran away from home before high school to find fame and fortune as a soul singer, only to realize that the world was not ready for such an individual. He busked in the streets of Paris and Tokyo before landing back in New York where Tiven discovered him.
Completing his own new album is not Hooks' only activity of late:
He sang backgrounds on Frank Black's new album, Honeycomb, to be released July 24th on Back Porch/Virgin Records, and is also on the follow-up album, The Sicilian, to be released early in 2006. He performed on new
Little Milton album, Think of Me (Telarc), and wrote one song with
Milton for the recording. Hooks also sang lead on the Gary Lucas/Gods & Monsters album version of 'Grace' (which
Lucas wrote with
Jeff Buckley and was originally recorded by Buckley on his debut album.) The album, which also features
David Johansen, should hit the streets later this year.
