Joss Stone: Soulful at 16

Joss Stone, the hot soul sensation of today is the UK’s version of local also sensational pop star Sarah Geronimo. Joss, who comes from Dover, England and is Joscelyn Eve Stoker in real life, is a talent show winner. Like Sarah, she was only 14 when she joined the Star for a Night on British TV. Sarah did a Celine Dion by singing To Love You More and won. Joss went for Aretha Franklin and performed Natural Woman and also won. Both were later signed to recording contracts and now have their own hit albums.

Joss has been getting so much attention these past few months primarily because of her extraordinary pipes. And they are indeed extraordinary because I cannot think of any 16-year-old who can sound like Aretha. Come to think of it, not even Aretha sounded like she does now when she was that age. But Joss does. Then to top it all, she does not in any way look like Aretha let alone when the Queen of Soul was a teen-ager. Joss is blond, blue-eyed and has model-pretty looks. If she wasn’t discovered singing Natural Woman she might have been packaged as another Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera wannabe.

Soul though is what Joss was born to sing and that is what she does in her first album The Soul Sessions. Unlike other products of talent shows these days though, she has easily transcended her Aretha beginnings and performs every cut in her own style. Something like that is surprising for a 16-year-old but Joss was fortunate enough to have producers like Steve Greenberg, The Definitive Otis Redding, Michael Mangini Who Let the Dogs Out and singer-producer Betty Wright, No Pain, No Gain. With this formidable trio behind her, Joss got the chance to record live with a group of legendary musicians from the golden days of soul in Miami, Latimore on keyboards, Little Beaver on guitar, Timmy Thomas on organ and Cindy Blackman on drums.

For materials, Joss and her producers went back to the ’60s and the ’70s and came up with the soul classics The Chokin’ Kind, Super Duper Love, Victim of a Foolish Heart, Dirty Man, I’ve Fallen in Love with You, All the King’s Horses and For the Love of You. Three rock tunes given the soul touch were added, the White Stripes’ Fell in Love with a Boy, Grand Funk Railroad’s Some Kind of Wonderful which is my favorite cut and from John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s well-remembered Woodstock moment I Had a Dream.

It is not at all difficult doing an album of oldies especially when you have an artist with a voice like Stone’s and so much potential for stardom. The remarkable thing about the cuts in The Soul Sessions though is that not one is an obvious choice. Sure, she does Aretha but it is All the King’s Horses and not Natural Woman. The producers here dug deep, deep, deep and even deeper into the great reservoir of soul tunes and came up with songs that were once hits but which people seem to have forgotten in favor of others that are now better-known and more frequently performed. Joss reinvents every one of them into her own.

The Soul Sessions has a unique timeless quality. It is an incredible album, debut or not, for anybody, more so when the singer is a teen-aged girl from the English countryside on her first trip to the US. Come to think of it though, this album would never have happened if Joss never ventured into London with her mother to sing in Star for a Night.

Top Hits In The US

R&B remains the music of the moment in the US as per the Billboard Hot 100 tabulation for the week. The top 10 sellers are: Yeah! by Usher featuring Lil Jon & Ludacris; One Call Away by Chingy featuring J. Weav; Tipsy by Ja-Kwon; Hotel by Cassidy featuring R. Kelly; Slow Jamz by Twista featuring Kanye West & Jamie Foxx; Splash Waterfalls by Ludacris; Dirt Off Your Shoulder by Jay-Z; The Way You Move by OutKast featuring Sleepy Brown; Toxic by Britney Spears and My Immortal by Evanescence. Bubbling below as the week’s greatest gainer in airplay is I Don’t Wanna Know by Mario Winans featuring Enya & P.Diddy.

The top albums are: Feels Like Home, the latest by Norah Jones; Bad Boy’s 10th Anniversary…the Hits by Various Artists; In This Skin by Jessica Simpson; Fallen by Evanescence; When the Sun Goes Down by Kenny Chesney; The College Dropout by Kanye West; Songs About Jane by Maroon5; Closer by Josh Groban; The Very Best of Sheryl Crow by Sheryl Crow; Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, the Grammy Album of the Year by OutKast.