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When Huey Lewis and the News charged the charts in the 1980s, they seemed to come out of nowhere. But they were an overnight success fifteen years in the making. By the time MTV took notice, these cats could play their asses off. And as demonstrated with every pleading yelp, funky guitar lick, snare crack, and brass squall of their new album Soulsville (W.O.W. Records, Nov. 2), they still can.

For the band's first album in nine years, they've chosen to dig deep into the rich coffers of Memphis' legendary Stax label, more than doing justice to the original recordings by soul greats like "Wicked" Wilson Pickett, Johnny Taylor, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes and Rufus Thomas. The fact is, there aren't many bands on the planet that could pull off a musically challenging project like this one-not with such vibrant authenticity.

The key, Lewis explains, was "selecting songs we really wanted people to hear. Just to be able to sing Johnny Taylor songs was a thrill. In a sense it's an audacious idea, but it ended up sounding good enough to where we're not embarrassed by it. Hopefully, people will be turned on to this music when they hear it and go back to the originals. That's our story and we're
stickin' to it."

The project was suggested by longtime manager Bob Brown. He re-united the band with Jim Gaines who last worked with the band in the mid eighties. Jim, who engineered both the SPORTS and FORE albums co-produced this one with the group, but also importantly, worked at the STAX studios as a young man, a witness to their most classic sessions. "It turned out to be the most fun I've ever had making a record," says Lewis. "We learned a lot and had a wonderful time doing it."

Soulsville contains 14 songs, only one of which, a stellar reprise of the Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself"-appears on the Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration, the label's definitive hits collection. And while most of the material will be unfamiliar to pretty much everyone outside of R&B scholars, once you hear them you'll wonder why they weren't all over the radio back in the label's heyday during the '60s and early '70s. On the album, half-forgotten gems like Pickett's pumping "Don't Fight It," which opens the record, Burke's "Cry to Me" and Otis' "Just One More Day" intermingle with such buried treasures as Taylor's "Just the One (I've Been Looking For)," Joe Tex's "I Want to (Do Everything for You)," Eddie Floyd's "Never Found a Girl" and Isaac Hayes' "Soulsville." And if it wasn't already apparent, Lewis confirms that he's a blue-eyed soul singer with few equals, getting deep into the emotional nub of each song and applying his gritty voice, the texture of coarse sandpaper, to a bunch of songs he was clearly born to sing.

The band relocated to Memphis (Jim Gaines' home ground) and recorded all the tracks and the bulk of the vocals in about two weeks. "We were at the historic Ardent Studios where Jim has worked a lot, and immediately caught the vibe that we were hoping for. We literally wallowed in it," Lewis says. We ate barbecue and we made the record the way they did it
in the old days."

The plan entailed jamming 10 musicians into two tracking rooms at Ardent-the rhythm section in one room and the horns in another-and recording live off the floor. In some cases-including Taylor's "Free" and Otis' "Just One More Day"-what you're hearing on the record is absolutely live, including the horn section and Lewis' deeply soulful lead vocals, with only the female backing vocals overdubbed.

These seasoned pros are extremely proud of what they've accomplished with Soulsville, which stands as the belated realization of a dream Lewis and the most senior band members-keyboard player Sean Hopper, drummer Bill Gibson and sax player Johnny Colla-have shared for damn near five decades. "This really is the music we've always loved," says Huey. "In the'60s, we all reinvented ourselves, and what we really wanted to be from the start was a soul band, although it was too scary at the time. We'd messed with soul music before, but this was jumping in
with both feet."

Lewis credits his remarkably natural musical feel to his dad, who filled the house with the sounds of big-band jazz while he and his drummer brother were growing up. The youngster gravitated toward the blues after getting hooked on his old man's Jimmy Rushing records, picking up the harmonica after his parents divorced and his mom took in folksinger and "Hey Joe" writer Billy Roberts as a boarder. He had a collection of harps and showed Huey the ropes. During the late '60s, Lewis formed a band with some fellow Cornell students. "We played frat parties, and all they wanted to hear was stuff like Cream's ‘Sunshine of Your Love,'" Huey recalls. "Through that experience, I discovered that, although I preferred to listen to blues and R&B, all music was fun to play."

Cobbled together in 1979 out of rival Bay Area bands Clover (who backed Elvis Costello on his classic 1977 debut album My Aim Is True) and Soundhole (who'd played behind Van Morrison), Huey Lewis and the News exploded with their third album, Sports (Chrysalis, 1983), which sold 10 million while throwing off five Top 10 singles. The group, which has sold more than 20 million albums and were Grammy Award winners and Academy Award nominees for "The Power of Love" (written for the film Back to the Future) remains a big concert draw, performing an average of 75 shows a year.

Lewis, who now lives in Montana, where he enjoys the outdoor pleasures of fly fishing and horseback riding, also does some acting when the spirit moves him, appearing in films (including Robert Altman's Short Cuts and Duets with Gwyneth Paltrow) and TV (a guest spot in the series Hot in Cleveland) and on stage (the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Chicago). But his first love and enduring passion remains making music.

"I always say that if we'd started out now, we'd probably be a jam band, covered from head to foot in tattoos," he says with a laugh, imagining himself and his inked-up band mates taking a field full of neo-hippies on a trippy musical excursion. "And we just did a record of three-minute songs. What were we thinking?"

Bud Scoppa
August 2010