Considering his wild man reputation, I expected frenetic charged R&B a la Little Richard or Esquerita. But this was fairly by-the-numbers raggedy 50s R&B IMHO.

The “lost gems” here are B sides “I’m Lookin’ for Someone to Love”, “Not Fade Away” and the silly but musically aggressive “Rock Me My Baby”. Buddy: you left us too soon.

Listening to the whole of this release tends to get tedious as it focuses on 2 main themes:

1) “I’m really hot and sexy..are you up to the challenge?” on songs like One Shot, Heartbreaker and Want It. [Though with the last one’s twist being “You lost your boyfriend to me because I’m ‘hawter’” as her DK girlfriends behind her say “Oooooooohh SNAP!”]
2) “You make me horny…can we have sex?” (Those would be Right Now [complete with the breathy “right there” outro suggesting that someone found the ‘magic button’], Ooh Aah, Touching my Body and Back Up)

Occasionally the CD gets over in spite of itself thanks to a nice musical backing as on the Spanish style guitar strum driving “Heartbreaker”. “Ride for You” attempts to break through the superficial tone with a call for a lover to give a strained relationship one more try and “Stay with Me” tries for vulnerability but those moments are too few and far between for this CD to be worth hearing anywhere but on a dance floor as a soundtrack to excess.

I changed the artist on this. Sam Cooke was a LATER member of the Soul Stirrers..he’s not heard on this song at all. Paul Foster and R.H. Harris trade leads on the tune.

Hear it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qOoDM7cPKc

I like a LOT of cheesy 70s pop, but…this one just sailed over the line into vomit territory for me. I would have sworn the vocal was JIMMY not Donny..he’s so freakin’ high on this one. Lyrics pretty icky too for a kid Donny’s age..what was he, 12? 13?

Blech!

If you search for “B000ENWKMY” you can replace it with the actual Amazon entry and have the cover show up.

Unsung African-American country singer. Nice tribute to Hank Sr. and Lefty Frizzell. Hear it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnAsOPF9OM4

Hear the song at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQezLV4yOug

OK but lacking the emotion Ray Charles brought to it.

Granted ALL THINGS NEW is a tough standard to reach being his strongest project thus far. But nonetheless outside of a few tracks this is pretty run-of-the-mill Chapman. “Cinderella”, “Broken” and “Something Crazy” are the standouts.