Leela James has woven the soul tradition soul very much her own – a music inspired by past masters Aretha Franklin, Mavis Staples, Gladys Knight and other iconic divas of generations past, but galvanized by her own life experience and highly focused artistic vision with the release of her new album, My Soul on the Stax Records (a division of Concord Music Group).
“I called this album My Soul because the music is a more accurate reflection of who I am than anything else I’ve ever recorded,” says James. “I did more of the writing, and I was involved with more of the creative process in general.
The first single off the album, “Tell Me You Love Me,” is a track that James co-wrote with Andrea Martin and Gordon Williams. Gerrard Baker loops in a sample of James riffing on a line from “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye,” the classic ballad made popular among soul audiences by the Manhattans in 1978.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, James was surrounded by music from a very early age – much of it from the soul, R&B and gospel traditions that predated her by at least a couple decades. “There was definitely a lot of Al Green played in our house,” she recalls. “And there were other gospel singers too, like James Cleveland, The Mighty Clouds of Joy and Shirley Caesar.” …“There was the soul and R&B and funk from artists like Aretha, Smoky Robinson and Parliament,” she says. “And there was B.B. King and all the other blues artists, and then the hip hop by Run DMC and LL Cool J. There was so much that I was exposed to.”
She made her recording debut with A Change Is Gonna Come, released on the Warner label in 2005.
In 2009, she recorded Let’s Do It Again for the Shanachie label. The album was a series of covers – mostly soul, R&B and funk tunes prompted readers of soultracks.com – the respected website for all things soul, R&B and gospel – to tap James as Female Vocalist of the Year in the site’s 2009 Readers Choice Poll in December 2009.
Clearly, Leela James’s musical soul embraces an infinite range of emotions and human struggles. “In the past, people tried to put me in a box, based on what they thought soul should sound like,” she says. “But soul is whatever comes out of you when you bring your deepest and most honest emotions to the forefront. All these songs are a representation of my soul.”
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