Ruby Soul

after a five year gap, Ms Turner has released this latest album – a 14 tracker that reflects the diversity manifest in her career. 'All That I Am' proffers all kinds of flavours but the most prominent is catchy pop/soul with a hint of AOR – the kind of music that sits easily on the playlist of Radio 2. 'Hello Baby', 'Fire In My Heart', 'Move On' and the lightly reggae-flavoured 'Putting You First' are good examples of what I mean. Pleasant and innocuous, Ruby, I'm sure, could knock stuff like this out in her sleep.

As part of its much acclaimed anthology series, SoulMusic Records is very proud to present “Livin’ A Life Of Love – The Jive Anthology, 1986-1991” a wonderful retrospective covering much-loved, Jamaican-born, British-based Ruby Turner’s five-year tenure with Jive Records.

There was a strong jazz vibe running through some of Philip Bailey's sides with Earth, Wind & Fire. On Soul on Jazz, his second release for Heads Up International, co-producer Bailey remakes several jazz standards, some with new lyrics by his son, Sir Bailey. The foray is most successful on Thelonious Monk's "Ruby My Dear," a percussive take on Gene McDaniels' "Compared to What," and Joe Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." R&B and jazz stylishly intersect on the smooth airy ballad "Unrestrained." Bailey redoes the EWF classic "Keep Your Head to the Sky," giving it a mellow sheen that's close to one of his past cuts, "Children of the Ghetto." On that and his dusky cover of Herbie Hancock's "Tell Me a Bedtime Story" and the loopy "Bop-Skip-Doodle," Bailey flexes his legendary falsetto. More jazz-oriented than Dreams, Soul on Jazz benefits from the sharing of production chores with Myron McKinley, Bob Belden, and Scott Kinsey. The album is definitely on track.