JOAN OSBORNE "Breakfast in Bed" Direct Holdings/Womanly Hips/Time Life
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JOAN OSBORNE"Breakfast in Bed"Direct Holdings/Womanly Hips/Time Life
OF ALL THE GUEST vocalists on "Standing in the Shadow of Motown," the 2002 documentary film about the label's legendary house band, the Funk Brothers, Joan Osborne alone fashioned something original out of the overly familiar songs. Her two numbers from the movie, "Heat Wave" and "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," are bonus tracks on "Breakfast in Bed," her splendid new album of eight more R&B classics and six of her own compositions in the same style.
Maybe her triumph in the film shouldn't have been such a surprise, because a few months before the movie opened, she had released "How Sweet It Is," a terrific collection of '60s and '70s rock and soul tunes. That album was mostly ignored, like much of what Osborne has done since the fluky top-five success of her 1995 single, "One of Us." But she has developed into one of our finest singers, whether she's with the Grateful Dead, jazzman Greg Osby or the Holmes Brothers. She has such an effortless command of phrasing and pitch that she sounds off-handedly conversational when sliding through a verse and thrilling when she shifts gears for the chorus.
Thus when she tackles two Gladys Knight songs on the new disc, "I've Got to Use My Imagination" and "Midnight Train to Georgia," Osborne can be more understated than her role model yet just as dramatic. Osborne can make lyrics so personal that songs associated with men such as Bill Withers ("Ain't No Sunshine"), the Stylistics ("Break Up to Make Up") and the Manhattans ("Kiss and Say Goodbye") sound as if they'd been written for a woman. In the liner notes, Osborne says she wrote the album's new songs as if she were Thom Bell cranking out hits in the Philly Soul heyday, and the results are nearly sensual and hooky enough to back up her claim -- most notably on "Heart of Stone."
-- Geoffrey Himes
Appearing Saturday at the Hot August Blues Festival at Oregon Ridge Park and Sunday at the Birchmere.
