“Rediscoveries” are rare in blues and R & B these days. About the closest thing recently was the rehabilitation of Memphis soul legend James Carr, the man who recorded the original “Dark End of the Street” in 1966 and seemed marked for stardom until mental illness derailed him a few years later. After decades of torment this frail, elderly-looking man in his late 40s received a hero’s welcome this year from European fans who still revere southern soul artists as much as they do Chicago bluesmen.
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Ward and the Untouchables signed a contract with Gordy and went on to accompany a gospel-based Detroit group called the Falcons, featuring vocalist Wilson Pickett, on the original recording of “I Found a Love” on Lu Pine in 1962. That song, seminal in the development of modern soul music, was based on a tune Ward claims as his own, “Forgive Me Darling,” which had been a regional hit for the Untouchables.
Ward left the Untouchables soon after in a dispute over finances. The band persevered without him through the next decade, finally winning fame and fortune in the 70s as the Ohio Players. Ward, meanwhile, continued touring and doing session work with Pickett and various others, eventually joining Gordy’s stable of studio musicians at Motown.
Ward is obviously exhilarated about his revitalized career, but he’s also been handed a heavy burden. The advance publicity on him has been mercilessly extravagant; to read the press releases, he’s a risen-from-the-ashes combination of Robert Johnson, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix. No one can live up to standards like that; if Ward is anything less than superhuman, he may be considered a failure.
Ward can build an entire solo on chords, but they’re not the fleet, swinging chords of a Wes Montgomery. His harmonic framework is often Eastern-sounding, with an exotic, exploratory urgency reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix; he combines good-natured soul minstrelsy with a tinge of ecstatic purple haze. As always, his fusion of down-home roots and pop stylings is effortless and seductive.
Part of the problem was pacing. Rather than letting the band warm up, Ward played from the start. He’d get the room jumping with his own fiery explorations, then sit back and let bassist Bobby Rock run through a couple of contemporary blues standards. Rock ambled through the room at one point, singing Bobby Bland’s “Members Only” without a microphone–virtually inaudible for most of the song.
