If you go back and listen to some of the great rhythm and blues (R&B) singers from the sixties and compare them to what's called R&B today, with very few exceptions, you can't help notice how the genre has lost touch with the blues segment of its name. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find anything even resembling something that passes for rhythm in most of the dreck they try to pass off as R&B. I have no idea what happened, but what used to be the music Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye burnt the house down with is now mainly associated with adult easy listening stations.
R&B was always a more polished and refined take on the blues with some of the rougher edges smoothed out. However it still used to be able to get people out of their seats and dancing and tug at your heart strings. Disco has a lot to answer for, but I think the worst casualty of that era was what happened to soul and R&B music. If there were ever a couple of genres that needed a heart transplant it's these two as they've been on life support for the last couple of decades and in desperate need of some sort of resuscitation. While it still might be too early to take R&B off the critical list, there's at least a sign that somebody is willing to attempt to give it the transfusion it needs to stabilize its vital signs.
When Quintus McCormick started playing guitar he wasn't particularly interested in the blues. It wasn't until he left his native Detroit and came to Chicago that he found his way into the blues. Even then it was only by accident, as he was taking gigs playing guitar to help pay for his schooling, he has a bachelor's degree in music from Columbia College in Chicago, and it wasn't until he was doing a stint with Chi-Town Hustlers in 1990 that he and the blues found each other. From there he took gigs as a sideman for the likes of James Cotton that took him deeper into the blues. However, you don't need to be told any of this to know that he's tapped into the heartbeat of the blues, all you have to do is give a listen to his new release, Hey Jodie! on Delmark Records to know that he might have started late with the blues, but he's sure made up for lost time.
So, okay you say, what's any of this have to do with R&B? Well, the very first song on the disc, the title track "Hey Jodie" (a Jodie is defined on the cover as a noun meaning a back door lover), is one of those sweetly aching R&B songs that I thought had ceased to exist some thirty years ago. To be perfectly honest I wasn't expecting anything of the sort when I put the disc on, so I was somewhat taken aback and not able to appreciate what it was I was listening to on the first go round. It was only after a second listen that I caught how McCormick and the rest of his band have infused the song with all the subtle nuances that are the hallmarks of great R&B tunes.
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