Cray, Robert

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ROBERT CRAY

Born: Columbus, Georgia, 1 August 1953

Genre: Blues

Best-selling album since 1990: Midnight Stroll (1990)

Hit songs since 1990: "The Forecast (Calls for Pain)," "Just a Loser"

Since the 1980s Robert Cray has brought blues music into the mainstream, giving the idiom a degree of popularity not seen since the early 1970s work of blues master B.B. King. A skilled guitarist as well as singer, Cray's most impressive achievement has been to combine traditional blues forms with more recent styles such as rhythm and blues and soul. The result is an exciting series of albums that capture a modern edge without losing their historical awareness. If Cray has any weakness it is that his music tends to sound overly clean and polished, but even at its slickest it is never less than enjoyable. In the years following the late 1990s Cray moved away from blues to explore a straight-ahead R&B vein, with excellent results.

Cray was born in Columbus, Georgia, but raised in Oregon. As a child his influences included piano and vocal R&B legend Ray Charles as well as lesser-known artists such as searing 1960s soul vocalist O. V. Wright. In 1974 he formed the Robert Cray Blues Band and began playing local engagements around the Oregon city of Eugene. His big break came in 1977, when he was invited to play the San Francisco Blues Festival with legendary artist Albert Collins. Soon after, Cray hooked up with producer Dennis Walker, who arranged for the young performer's initial entry into the studio in 1979. Although several fine albums resulted, Cray's popularity was confined to a small blues audience until the success of Strong Persuader (1986). A perfect mixture of tough blues and punchy, horn-driven R&B, the album is distinguished by an excellent selection of material. Hard-driving songs such as "Smoking Gun" and "I Guess I Showed Her" feature classic blues themes of sin and redemption, but Cray fits them into a contemporary matrix of stinging guitar, organ, and swaggering horns. On top of it all is the power of Cray's voice, only slightly less distinctive than those of his idols Wright and B.B. King. While a shouting rasp lay at the center of Wright's voice, Cray's roughness is reserved for the upper edge of his range. His singing is smooth and keening in a manner that recalls 1950s and 1960s R&B great Sam Cooke.

The success of Strong Persuader made Cray the only blues artist to place an album on the Top 20 charts in over a decade. His popularity at its peak, he entered the 1990s with a string of albums that, while lacking Strong Persuader 's first-rate songs, were fine examples of his unique blues-R&B hybrid. Critics mentioned that occasionally Cray's albums during this period sounded too smooth, lacking the visceral bite that characterized the work of his forebears. Still, Cray's commitment and drive always lent his music credibility. Midnight Stroll (1990) features the tough hit "The Forecast (Calls for Pain)," with its opening lyric capturing the essence of blues philosophy: "Coffee for my breakfast / Shot of whisky on the side." I Was Warned (1992) is another strong set, highlighted by the simmering ballad "The Price I Pay." Increasingly Cray was showing his skills as a detailed shaper of slow songs, gradually building intensity within a performance. His guitar playing, economical yet incisive, worked hand in hand with his vocals to achieve an exciting synthesis.

As the 1990s progressed Cray began shifting his energies more to singing than playing. Concomitant with this change was a heightened interest in 1960s and 1970s R&B music. On albums such as Take Your Shoes Off (1999) the traditional blues influence is still present, but it is overshadowed by the suppleness of his pulsating R&B sound. Rather than diluting the power of his music, this new focus strengthens it. A highlight of the album is the ballad "All the Way," which Cray wrote with his wife, film-maker Sue Turner-Cray. Set against an inviting bed of bottom-heavy percussion and churchy-sounding organ, Cray's vocal achieves a slow-burning power. The drums and organ recall the deep R&B records created in the early 1970s by master producer Willie Mitchell; Take Your Shoes Off honors Mitchell's pioneering sound without resorting to imitation. Cray's release Shoulda Been Home (2001) continues in the same style, although songs such as the stinging "The 12 Year Old Boy" prove that Cray has not lost his sharp blues edge.

Robert Cray's fusion of blues and classic R&B has been so successful that by the late 1990s the two genres were perceived, from a marketing standpoint, as interchangeable. Cray's records and those of his 1960s R&B influences are found side by side in music stores, while the term "R&B" is now reserved for more contemporary artists such as Mary J. Blige and Usher. This development points to Cray's influence and the enduring potency of his soulful blues sound.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Bad Influence (Hightone, 1983); Strong Persuader (Mercury, 1986); Midnight Stroll (Mercury, 1990); I Was Warned (Mercury, 1992); Sweet Potato Pie (Mercury, 1997); Take Your Shoes Off (Rykodisc, 1999); Shoulda Been Home (Rykodisc, 2001).