The Blue Van
Dear Independence
TVT Records
By Jose Fritz
White is a very uncompelling adjective. White rice, white board, white bread, white light and white power all have the same homogeneous blandness. As it was said so clearly before, “White men can’t jump.” It’s the same when genres of music are described as white. White rap and white gospel are largely not respected and some would say with good reason. It was the same way with soul music before that -- white soul has never been respected. That’s not to say the assessment was without reason.
But like white rappers, there are skilled white musicians aplenty. Rock n’ roll was originally an invention of African-Americans, but it’s been thoroughly co-opted by Caucasians. Why it is that rock can be white, but soul cannot?
My theory is that it requires a few successful charismatic artists to carry the convention across the racial barrier. Elvis took a set of Arthur Crudup songs and carried them across the median strip. In the last decade, Eminem managed to do the same with rap. He’s graduated from novelty artist to a legitimate, commercially-successful artist and taken the genre with him. White soul is still hurting though. James Brown once said that Rod Stewart was the greatest white soul singer who ever lived. That, my friends, is a sorry state of affairs. Enter The Blue Van.
They freely borrow from the oldest bit of blues and funk, even tipping their hat with more obvious lyrical references. The first line of opening track “The Oddessy” [“fill my tin cup with your dew”] is probably a reference to the old mountain song “Mountain Dew,” which was adapted as a bop tune in the late ‘40s. Two lines later, in the same song, they want to “lead me to another state of blue [and] pour honey in my ear,” a likely reference to “Honey Blues.” It’s an archaic cut from the most ancient roots of soul, performed by Lottie Beaman, Panama Francis and even the archaic Funny Paper Smith.
William Bell said that “All gods’ children got soul.” He implied, but did not say that some have more than others, so they have soul to spare, soul to make up for generations of soulless soul singers, soul to make up for Elvis ripping off Big Joe Williams and soul to make up for a generation of white funk bands dirtying our ears with soft covers of James Brown tunes. They have enough soul to make up for everything Van Morrison did and Joe Cocker failed to finish. Enough for everything The Rolling Stones did after Brian Jones died. It’s a big debt to cover, and they’ve inherited it freely.
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