Roy Young making his U.S. debut
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Soul singer Roy Young came to love American rhythm-and-blues music when he was a child in his native Jamaica. He still regrets having been too young to see Sam Cooke when the singing star performed in Jamaica. His parents had emigrated to England by then and young Roy was essentially an unsupervised street kid.
“Sam Cooke is my favorite singer of all time,” Young, a resident of Tel Aviv, Israel, said from Miami, where his manager lives. “His singing was a gift from God, effortless. When I die, if there’s such a thing as a musical heaven, Sam Cooke can’t stop me from coming into his house. I’ll be like a little girl with a skirt on. ‘Please, Sam, can I just to talk to you?’ ”
After his move to Bristol, England, Young witnessed the legendary 1967 Stax Records European tour. The show included Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Eddie Floyd, Arthur Conley, Carla Thomas, Booker T and the MG’s and the Mar-Keys.
“It’s was amazing to see all these guys in one night,” Young said in his still discernable Jamaican accent. “Nobody was sitting. Everybody was going crazy because Sam and Dave were the most explosive thing you’d ever seen. I’m thinking to myself, ‘Damn, I wouldn’t like to be Otis.’ Because he had to follow that. But when he came out everything went tenfold more than that. I couldn’t believe it.”
After that Stax concert, Young knew what he wanted to do with his life — be a soul singer. He dropped out of school at 15 to sing with two bands, an all-white group called the Workshop and a black band called the Atlantic Rollers. Young subsequently performed in Britain, Europe, Russia and Israel. He signed with EMI, but the deal yielded only a few singles. Even so, his collaborators included Marvin Gaye, the Four Seasons and Pat Rizzo of War.
Despite his international career, Young has never performed in the United States. But he’s finally come to the land of his musical inspiration. Young makes his American debut Sunday at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. His new CD, too, was recorded in part in Memphis, home of Stax Records.
At the Jazz Fest Sunday, Young will perform shortly before another of his music heroes, Al Green. Coincidentally, Willie Mitchell, Green’s longtime producer in Memphis, added his special touch to Young’s CD, entitled Memphis. The producer’s work for the CD is magical, Young said. Mitchell likewise praised Young.
“Who would have thought,” Mitchell said in a recent press release, “that a Jamaican-born singer living in Tel Aviv would be responsible for saving soul music in the U.S.?”
Tommy Boy Entertainment is releasing Memphis in the U.S. July 15. It’s already available in digital format through iTunes and also will be on sale in CD form at the Jazz Fest.
Australian brothers Daniel and Gideon Frankel wrote all but one of the Memphis tracks, the exception being a remake of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.”
The singer’s wife, Orly, encouraged her initially reluctant husband to collaborate with the Frankels.
“When they first called me, about nine years ago, to come and do something for them, I refused,” Young said. “ ‘Naw, I don’t want to do nothing for no young little guys coming up. I’m too old for that.’ But my wife forced me to go.”
Young recorded a track with the brothers, but then didn’t hear from them for years.
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