February 08, 2007
BERNARD PERUSSE, The Gazette
Two years ago, a couple of Colin James fans from Vancouver stopped for a bite at a restaurant in Sausalito, Calif., only to see James himself sitting to their left. Greetings and pleasantries were exchanged, but no one mentioned the elephant in the room, sitting at a table beside James's.

Having lunch with friends was one of James's own idols. "Everyone's totally aware that Van Morrison's sitting there," James said in a telephone interview, chuckling at the memory. "I weighed the moment, thought, 'Should I say something?' "

James, after all, has covered Morrison songs live. He selected two favourites for his 2005 release Limelight, drawing radio success with his version of the Belfast Cowboy's immortal Into the Mystic. He explained his decision to put Morrison's I Will Be There on his latest album - the horn-driven rhythm 'n' blues smoker Colin James and the Little Big Band 3 - with these words: "I'm a massive fan."

But in that do-or-die moment in Sausalito, James did as countless people have done when facing the prospect of glad-handing the notoriously irascible singer: He backed off.

"I didn't want to know any of that," he said, referring to oft-told tales about Morrison's lack of social skills. "You've got to have musical heroes, and I don't really care what they do. What goes on the records is all I need to know. So I just let it go."

By that standard, if what has gone on Little Big Band 3 is all you need to know about James, you can still learn volumes about his devotion to soul and R&B.

Let's be clear, though: We're not talking about what is now called R&B - the kind James's 11-year-old daughter, Deghan, is growing up with, like Mary J. Blige or the Black Eyed Peas. James makes grudging concessions to that version of the genre. "I'm usually on (Deghan's) case about that," James said. "The other day, she put (a Mary J. Blige disc) on that was pretty good. I also heard Justin Timberlake for the first time the other day and I didn't hate it. Sometimes you're surprised."

No one, however, will be surprised to hear James and the Little Big Band playing a brand of R&B that was once dispensed in loose, flawless three-minute bursts during which a razor-sharp rhythm section would spar with sizzling horns, some tough guitar-string bending, a church-influenced keyboard and a possessed vocalist.

It was the kind of music you might hear from Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and Wilson Pickett, all of whom are covered on Little Big Band 3. It's the type of sound that helped rule the airwaves in the heyday of Atlantic Records in the 1950s and '60s, when the great Ahmet Ertegun, who died in December, ran the label.

The late producer Tom Dowd, who worked with the likes of Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding in those golden Atlantic years, was supposed to helm James's first album in 1988.

A perfect match, you'd think. But no.

Trouble is, Dowd didn't want to let James play any blues. "We had a hard time, me and Tom. He took me to record stores and tried to get me to play like Eurythmics," he said, laughing. After completing only one track, James and Dowd parted ways.

History shows that James didn't cave on the style issue and followed his own path, which always stuck pretty close to blues, rock and soul. The new album, as the title indicates, is his third Little Big Band venture. The first was released in 1993 and the second five years later - when the swing revival, to James's irritation, made him seem like a bandwagon-jumper. In 1998, it was hard to miss the brass beat of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies or the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

"I had done my record (Colin James and the Little Big Band II) a year and a half before the whole thing happened, so by the time it got released in America, it had peaked," he said. "With the first (Little Big Band) record, I always felt like we were doing something against the grain and, all of a sudden, I was sucked into the vortex of a massive fad, and it made the whole thing a little strange."

No such problems with the third, though. All James had to worry about this time was selecting the right songs, the ones to which he felt the strongest emotional commitment.

The Little Big Band has accumulated about 40 such nuggets over the years - and on a given night, you might hear most of them live. When James spoke to The Gazette, the eight-member band - including four horn players - had performed 27 songs the night before. Among the surprises was Irma Thomas's Ruler of My Heart, which the Susie Arioli Band also covered recently.

The live experience and the soul genre have traditionally gone hand in hand, and the recent loss of James Brown was another reminder of how few of the great showmen are left.

"All these first-generation, second-generation Chicago and New York R&B singers are dying," James said. "It's wild to think that kids nowadays might listen to the records, but they'll never be able to sit there and see it."

Which is what Little Big Band shows are for. And, if the disc is anything to go by, James has never sounded in finer voice. "I listen to my early records now and I sound like I'm on helium. I just think I picked the music that allowed me to grow into my voice," he said. "At one point I was a guitar player who sang a little bit. Now singing is as much of a joy for me."

Colin James and the Little Big Band perform Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. at Salle Wilfrid