IT’S HIS WORLD

Lee Fields: Honey Dove
From My World (Truth & Soul, 2009)

If at first you don’t succeed… well, you know the rest. Lee Fields lives the mantra. During the 70s he released several 7”s and a full length but never made it big. Thanks to crate diggers, he never left the conscience of the soul faithful. Truth & Soul, true to their name, signed him and released his latest album earlier this month.

“Honey Dove” is quite representative of the album. With a lazy-summer-day guitar strum, it floats along like a gentle breeze. Fields fills the track with pleas to a lover who has gone and is begging her to come back. Toward the end of the track, horns gently blare echoing his yearning for his lover’s return.

Production is helmed by Jeff Silverman, who, before T & S made a name with the too-short-lived Soul Fire, and Leon Michels (of El Michels Affair fame) along with their coterie, and Fields takes to the mic and serves up a batch of goodness. “My World” is a smoothed-out and sublime work. The album even exhibits a couple of instrumental numbers, a rare feature of a vocal LP these days. Fields also mellows out the Supremes/HDH classic “My World Is Empty Without You.” Vocally, the album is a honey-tinged exhibit, a lesson in doing what you can do well. You don’t need bells and whistles when you know how to make music sweet like this.