Lou Rawls shines at the Blue Note

By Paul W. Blair

JAKARTA (JP): Lou Rawls, now midway through a week-long engagement at Jakarta's new Blue Note club, possesses what is surely one of the world's easiest-to-recognize singing voices.

It is, in turn, mellow and throaty, then pleasingly raspy. Incredibly elastic, it sometimes drops a full octave unexpectedly in mid-phrase, to great dramatic effect.

Rawls has power and also endurance. His first set on Monday evening included seventeen songs and lasted about ninety minutes. Then, after an hour break, he came back and did another show.

Rawls, originally from Chicago, got his singing start in church choirs and was, for a time, a member of the acclaimed gospel quartet The Pilgrim Travelers. His first album for Capitol, released in 1962, began a series that now numbers over thirty. Along the way, he has won four Grammy awards and guested on just about every TV show that has ever aired. He is, therefore, a seasoned pro who really knows how to program an evening of music and achieve instant rapport with his audience.

"If I don't love you," sang Rawls midway through his first set, "grits ain't groceries, eggs ain't poultry and Mona Lisa is a man!"

Grits Ain't Groceries is one of the R&B classics he pulled out of the hat for his Blue Note audience. Others were Since I Met You, Baby, Fine Brown Frame and The Drifters' A Lover's Question. There were a couple of medium-fast blues too, Room With a View and Hoochie-Coochie Man. Then there were tunes that Rawls himself originally made popular like Love is a Hurtin' Thing, Natural Man and Let Me Be Good to You. And he preceded his version of The Wind Beneath My Wings by observing wryly that he had recorded his version of the song well before Bette Midler's but his record company had decided to keep that fact a secret.

Rawls is perhaps at his best on songs that allow him to play with the lyrics and shift rhythmic accents around, since he has a truly marvelous knack for toying with the beat. In that sense, he's surely a jazz singer (though he'd likely reject that term as too limiting). He is somewhat less effective on slower material like Sophisticated Lady and Send in the Clowns in which the words do matter. Each of these numbers, though, delighted the Monday crowd since he used them as showcases for his amazing vocal agility and sly sense of humor.

Even before singing his opening number, Rawls had an onstage chore to perform, signing a metal plaque that will adorn one of the Blue Note's tables. Several of his tunes were prefaced by lengthy spoken introductions that were quite musical in themselves. He is being backed this week by a talented five- member band (vibes, guitar, piano, bass and drums) that is almost worth the price of admission alone. Guitarist David T. Walker played several solos in an distinctive stuttering style that added to the high spirits in the house.