Hi, About a month ago, I was in my local HiFi shop talking to the repair engineer. Like me, he is a big soul music fan. He has a lot rare stuff and always drops me pointers of some new (& old) items. On this visit he seemed quite excited. He played me a cd of a female singer backed by some very good musicians. The songs were lesser known soul stuff from yester year. The style was in a southern soul sound with a retro feel to it. The album was called The Soul Sessions. After listening to a few bits of the cd, I was told the singer was from Devon in England. Then I was told the singer was white 16 year old girl. That did surprise me. Her name is Joss Stone. From what I've heard I decided to look into this artist a bit more. As a big collector of music & black music in particular, I have always been interested when the music industry finds a white person who can do black music. From the days of Elvis Presley to Eminem, the music industry loves to find a "Great White Hope". A lot of popular music has it's roots, directly & indirectly, based in the various forms of black music. Looking into Joss Stone, I soon find she is being hailed as a white Aretha Franklin. She has had a lot of good press. Most of it has been from the States. She recorded the album over there has done a of tour and a lot promo gigs & shows. Joss Stone was born on April 11th, 1987 in Devon in England. It all started to go right for her when she entered a competition that was run by the BBC called Star for a night. She won through and performed a Donna Summer song for the broadcast. From this, she picked up her managers who then, showed a video of her to a london based production team. This production team, Boilerhouse Boys, got in touch with the man in charge of S-Curve records. From this, Joss Stone was flown to New York for an audition and was snapped up. She had sung a number of soul classics at this audition. At first, she was was going to do an album of comtemporary songs & a few tunes she had written. They got in Betty Wright, a mighty fine soul singer/ writter & producer to help out. But when they did a obsure Carla Thomas cover, they decided to change tack. They went for an album with a live Rhythm & Blues band doing classic & obscure covers. The album features some of the cream of the Miami soul sound of the 70's and away they went. The end effort has been the album "The Soul Sessions". This has had some really big rave reviews in the states. A lot seems to be made of the fact that she is 16, white, from England & singing old style soul. The white Arthea Franklin has been mentioned. I will be have a good listen to this cd very soon so I'll report back. I do have the feeling that this album will be making the rounds in media & it could be this years "Nora Jones". We will see. Here is some info on Joss Stone. There are a few music downloads so you can get a taster. [URL]http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000YHJMS/qid=1073050724/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/202-4039373-4995033[/URL] [URL]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000C0FKA/102-2497786-6771342?v=glance[/URL] [URL]http://www.s-curverecords.com/joss/[/URL] [URL]http://www.popentertainment.com/joss.htm[/URL] [URL]http://www.shorefire.com/artists/jstone/bio_jstone.html[/URL] SCIDB
