TWO DAYS AWAY (1977)
NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS (June, 1977)
Elkie Brooks is somewhere in her early thirties. Since she set out on a career as a singer at the turn of the
last decade she's injected her musical background and knowedge - gospel, blues, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith - into bands led by jazzers Eric Delaney and Humphrey Lyttelton, and sung co-leads in two road show-like rock outfits Dada and Vinegar Joe, both led by hubbie guitarist Pete Gage - the latter with Robert
Palmer.
On "Two Days Away", her second solo album, Elkie
rejects her more recent rockin' in favour of returning to her earlier jazz heritage. A giant leap for credibility?
To be truthful, I was dreading playing this album. Though the sleeve lacks any campness - it presents a more subtle variant on the Elkie The Fox theme of "Rich Man's Woman", her first solo record, I had awful visions of her doing a Bette Midler, having heard rumours that this was a step back to her jazz background.
Forget about that. This album is done straight. The humour on it is born of warmth. The real clue to the record lies in the musical credits. It's produced by Leiber and Stoller, who also contribute half of the ten songs. It features the New York Horns, the Muscle Shoals Horns, strings, and a host of stellar session names. It was recorded both in London and New York.
It also features Elkie's band - the very large Jean Roussell on keyboards, guitarist Isaac Guillory, the excellent Vinegar Joe bassist Steve York, and drummer Trevor Morais. Not only that, but "Two
Days Away" was cut live. From the first, gut-tingling
lines of the paced-down "Love Potion No 9", it's obvious that if this level can be kept up then "Two Days Away" will prove to be really classy stuff indeed.
It's an almost stirring, gorgeously tasteful workout of the number, underpinned - for all its M Shoals Horns - by Roussell's sensuous keyboards. Elkie purrs the number out in the kind of textured, torchlit voice reminiscent of the kind of late-night supper clubs
where Ella Fitzgerald might have slunk up onstage twenty or so years back.
The mood is continued, with more than mere traces of, say, Dionne Warwick and Aretha, and many, many more. "Spiritland", a pacier track written by
Elkie with Pete Gage, is based on a quasi-reggae riff which - and this is a tribute to the way her two producers work - is strengthened rather than negated by the massed horns and back-up vocals. In fact, it's here that you'll probably first realise the way she's working as a band member and also note the empathy that recording live permits not only between her and the band but also between the record and the listener.
"Honey, Can I Put On Your Clothes" makes you remember that it's very dangerous making an album of "mature" love songs unless the vocals are handled with total confidence. Most of the album not only has this confidence but has quite a horny edge to it. See also the next cut, Ellie Greenwhich's "Sunshine After The Rain" - which also affords evidence of her note-juggling talents - and the tastefully lugubrious hit single "Pearl's A Singer".
Though they're held in there by the raunchy New Orleans-ish "Mojo Hannah" and Lieber and Stoller's own equally emotive "Saved", the middle three cuts on side two come across as dissapointingly pedestrian. Just badly chosen, duff material, that's all.
Oh yes, the jazz heritage schtick? Well, not too happy about this record's getting tagged like that, really. I mean, does a "late night feel" have to automatically fit into a jazzier category? No, it's just mainly very powerful, very mature music. And can you think of another British female singer who's currently turning out anything that could be described like that?
Chris Salewicz
