The Lounge, Chatswood Concourse, March 21
8.5/10
Ruthie Foster wasn’t just born to sing, she was probably already singing in the womb. Music pours from her mouth like water from a tap, and when she turns the tap on full, she makes an astounding sound: a huge, church-bred cry that pierces your very soul.
Okay, you say, many singers have big voices. The wretched TV talent-quest industry is built on belters. But here’s the thing: when Ruthie hits the big notes – high, long, and of phenomenal power – she doesn’t lose the intimacy of when she’s singing softly. It’s the same deal, it just happens to be pushing you so far back in your seat you’re nearly in the lap of the person behind. Few singers have been able to do that. Aretha Franklin and maybe Sinatra at his best, but it’s certainly a short list. The records of hers with which I’m familiar didn’t prepare me for the fact I was to hear someone to live in the memory on the plane of greats like Jose Carreras and Betty Carter.
Foster hails from Austin, Texas, the state that’s given us so many great musicians, from Ornette Coleman to Janis Joplin, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and Beyonce. Like others on that list, she has catholic tastes that emerge both in the songs she writes and in those she covers, so the blues, gospel, soul and even country become one, united by an unfailing feel for a funky groove.
The groove comes courtesy of her own guitar (a new, Australian-made model Lloyd Spiegel gave her at the start of this tour) and Scottie Miller’s keyboard. The latter has been her collaborator for 17 years, and it shows. Mostly using piano or electric piano sounds, sometimes with a frosting of strings, Miller colours the songs, solos with panache and adds backing vocals. He’d already proved he was a more than useful operator in an opening solo set, playing his own material.
But sometimes one wished he would just back off the chordal playing enough so we could more readily hear Foster’s slippery, finger-picking grooves. Even better, of course, would be if she’d come with her full band, but that’s a hope for another time.
As it was, the highlights were manifold. Having signed to Sun Records for the Mileage album that just won her a first Grammy (after six nominations), she showed a keen sense of tradition by taking Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s That’s Alright (which was a Sun hit for Elvis Presley), slowing it down, and letting it simmer on a funky dialogue between guitar and keyboard. Even better was Pete Seeger’s If I Had a Hammer, again slowed, but very insistent, with her voice ringing out like some vast bell. Then on her own Phenomenal Woman she unleashed the full power of her miraculous singing to such an extent that all that had gone before seemed merely a trickle before the flood.