Harris's singing still has plenty of soul
SOMERVILLE -- ``You'll know by the end of the show that somebody messed with me early in life," singer Betty Harris announced at Johnny D's on Friday night. After a set of blistering old-school soul, you knew she wasn't kidding.
By the time Harris slowly burned a path through ``Never Will I Love Again," you had to wonder: Where has this woman been hiding all these years?
Harris is the latest soul legend to get her due after a 30-year hiatus from secular music. After recording throughout the 1960s, including a hit cover of Solomon Burke's ``Cry to Me," she retired from music around 1970, choosing to raise a family and perform in church. Only after Harris's daughter realized her mother was so beloved on soul websites did the singer resurface a few years ago.
Her timing couldn't be more appropriate. She recently won the rights to her old records (it's rumored that a Rhino Records reissue might be in the works), she's writing some of the best songs of her career, and judging from the Johnny D's crowd, plenty of soul fans still revere her music.
Crammed onto Johnny D's small stage with three backup singers (including her son), Harris was accompanied by a stellar band of Boston-area musicians who play with everyone from Roomful of Blues to Toni Lynn Washington. They included Bruce Bears on keyboards, Steve Brown on drums, Jesse Williams on bass, Kevin Belz on guitar, Doug James on baritone sax, Scott Aruda on trumpet, and Gordon Beadle on tenor sax. Between sets, Bears mentioned that the band had been practicing with Harris, who lives in Hartford, which explains why the sound was so cohesive.
Harris's hits, ``Cry to Me" and ``A Break in the Road," would come in the second set after an unnecessarily long, 45-minute intermission. But her best songs were her own. ``Happiness Is Mine" was a fitting opener, with Harris proudly announcing, ``I lost some weight / But I look damn good to me." ``Never Will I Love Again" found Harris taking the floor to talk to the ladies in the house, as couples quietly slow-danced off to the side.
When a gentleman near the stage requested ``Ride Your Pony," the driving party anthem she recorded with Lee Dorsey, even Harris was in disbelief. ``Who said that?" she called out. ``Raise your hand, baby." When he did, she chided him in jest, explaining that, ``I was 19; I could ride it back then."
But Harris's age has diminished none of her fire. Now in her mid-60s, she's still a force onstage and can croon like Otis Redding (with whom she once toured) with a voice that's more weathered but just as emotive.
If anything, age has been a gift. In all those years of not
performing, Harris said she finally realized what it meant to be
a soul singer: ``I think I found something to sing about."
