KING SOLOMON HICKS: Harlem (BLUES): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

King Solomon Hicks, the umpteenth blues prodigy, was born in Harlem 25 years ago, in the golden age of US rap. Yet it was on the guitar that little Solomon leaned at an early age and by the age of 13 he was already a guitarist in the famous Cotton Club. For his first solo album, the young New Yorker pays tribute to the neighbourhood of his childhood, which was home to so many big names in Afro-American music.

There's no doubt about it, "Harlem" is an album of blues, with everything this kind of album has to offer: original compositions, covers, groove (a little), guitar soli (a lot) and a fierce desire to respect the codes of the genre. That's where the problem lies, because even if it's easy to assume that this first album is thought of as the calling card of an emerging artist, it's hard to get passionate about a work that piles up clichés without taking the slightest risk.

Certainly, King Solomon Hicks knows how to play the blues and his delicate soul voice is very pleasant. But the classicism of the interpretation refers at best to the standards of the Chicago blues version of the Blues Brothers ('421 South Main') and George Benson's jazz funk (the successful instrumental cover of Gary Wright's 'Love is Alive'), at worst to the most unruly and uninspired blues rock ('Have Mercy On Me', 'Riverside Drive').

However, with the exception of the track 'It's Alright', which seems to have come straight out of an unfinished jam session, the album is on the whole well done. But King Solomon Hicks is a little too humble, which masks his personality as an artist and hides his real potential as a bluesman. This is all the more curious given that the choice of certain covers is rather curious. What need, for example, to cover Al Kooper's soul ballad 'I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know' when Donny Hathaway's version remains forever unsurpassed?

Unfortunately, "Harlem" is just another blues album, without asperity and therefore without genius, intended to perpetuate a style that the young generation, with a few rare exceptions, has a hard time appropriating. But it is only through a personal and ambitious reinterpretation of the blues of his elders that King Solomon Hicks will manage to make a name for himself. Let's hope he does. In any case, he has all the future ahead of him to assert himself. - Official website

KING SOLOMON HICKS

HARLEM

PROVOGUE RECORDS

BLUES