You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can sometimes glean a little bit about an artist by the track listing on the cover of their album. Run your finger past the song titles on Lee Fields' latest album, It Rains Love — across "Blessed by the Best," "God Is Real," "Love is the Answer" — and you might rightly guess that Fields is a singer invested in spreading love through soulful music.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first single Fields ever released. He's holding it down in a circle that's getting smaller and smaller. In the last few years, Fields has lost friends and peers like Charles Bradley, who was known as the "Screaming Eagle of Soul," and Sharon Jones, who at one time was Fields' back-up singer. Lee's longtime band, The Expressions, are a who's who of session musicians and sometimes double as The Daptones house band. They perform live in this session.
Fields shares the sage advice he got from legendary preacher and singer Solomon Burke and stories about his early days, including the speakeasy his parents used to run out of their home in North Carolina on weekends. Listen to it all in the player.
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