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6993 - STEVE CROPPER & FELIX CAVALIERE - Midnight Flyer (2010)

STEVE CROPPER & FELIX CAVALIERE
''MIDNIGHT FLYER''
JUNE 15 2010
37:58

1 /You Give Me All I Need
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Tom Hambridge /3:35
2 /Midnight Flyer
Felix Cavaliere / Tom Hambridge /2:47
3 /Now
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Tom Hambridge /3:23
4 /When You're with Me
Felix Cavaliere / Henry Gross / Tom Hambridge /3:07
5 /I Can't Stand It
Smokey McAllister /2:30
6 /Chance with Me
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Tom Hambridge /3:22
7 /Move the House
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Tom Hambridge /3:27
8 /Sexy Lady
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Tom Hambridge /3:46
9 /Early Morning Riser
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Tom Hambridge /3:29
10 /All Night Long
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Tom Hambridge /2:57
11 /I Can't Stand the Rain
Don Bryant / Bernard Miller / Ann Peebles /2:36
12 /Do It Like This
Felix Cavaliere / Steve Cropper / Jon Tiven /2:59

Aria Cavaliere /Duet, Vocals
Felix Cavaliere /Keyboards, Vocals, Vocals (Background)
Steve Cropper /Guitar
Tom Hambridge /Drums, Percussion, Producer, Vocals (Background)
Russell Hospedales /Vocals (Background)
David Lugaba /Vocals (Background)
Allison Presswood /Bass
Ray Ventura /Talk Box
Mark Williams /Vocals (Background)

Review
by Steve Leggett (AllMusic)
A second outing from 1960s icons Steve Cropper of the MG's and Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals, following 2008’s fine, Stax-grooving Nudge It Up a Notch, Midnight Flyer builds on the same retro-soul template. Again the playing is impeccable, with Cropper delivering the precise, tonally perfect guitar leads he’s done his whole impressive career, while Cavaliere still has an expressively soulful voice and a wonderfully natural and joyous sense of phrasing, and track after track here starts like it’s going to burn the house down. That the house escapes with nothing more than mild smoke damage is the real surprise. The problem is the songwriting. Most of these tracks were written by either Cropper or Cavaliere, or both together (there are a couple of covers, most notably one of Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain”), and while everything sounds great, the songs shade into the generic. It’s telling that the most memorable and grooving track is the last one, “Do It Like This,” which is really an MG's-like instrumental with occasional vocal interjections. Even the version here of “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” while certainly competent and well-sung and -played, somehow doesn’t resonate like it should, lacking most of the desperate, haunting urgency of Peebles’ original. It’s frustrating, really, because both of these artists can still deliver the goods, and the assembled band has a wonderful, deep south Stax groove going for it. The songs just aren’t here. It’s as simple as that.

Biography
by Cub Koda (AllMusic)
Probably the best-known soul guitarist in the world, Steve Cropper came to prominence in the early '60s, first with the Mar-Keys ("Last Night"), then as a founding member of Booker T. & the MG's. A major figure in the Southern soul movement of the '60s, Cropper made his mark not only as a player and arranger (most notably on classic sides by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett) but as a songwriter as well, co-writing the classic "In the Midnight Hour." After the breakup of the MG's, Cropper spent most of the '70s producing Jeff Beck and Mitch Ryder, among others. In the '80s, he rode the classic Stax sound (which he helped shape) back to popularity with a new audience when actors John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd tapped him for service in the Blues Brothers, a Saturday Night Live skit that stretched into several albums and a movie. Cropper remained in demand as a session man, producer, and collaborator into the new century, although very little appeared under his actual name as a recording artist. That changed in 2008 with the release of the affirming Nudge It Up a Notch, a project recorded with former Rascals frontman Felix Cavaliere and tracked at Jon Tiven's Hormone Studio in Nashville, on the revitalized Stax Records imprint. A second collaboration between Cropper and Cavaliere, Midnight Flyer, appeared in 2010. In 2011, Cropper released Dedicated: A Salute to the 5 Royales on 429 Records. The concept album was an all-star celebration and acknowledgment of the influence of seminal soul guitarist Lowman “Pete” Pauling and his mid-'50s to early-'60s group the “5” Royales on his playing. Co-produced with Tiven, some of Dedicated's guests included, B.B. King, Brian May, Steve Winwood, John Popper, Bettye LaVette, Lucinda Williams, Sharon Jones, Shemekia Copeland, Delbert McClinton, Willie Jones, Buddy Miller, and 21-year-old Louisiana singer/songwriter Dylan LeBlanc.

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