ANN PEEBLES + SYL JOHNSON
The Barbican

Ann Peebles

ANN Peebles is living proof that soul music is good for you. Slipping onto stage in a slinky black all-in-one, her face hardly creased with age, Peebles belies her 57 years.
And, with one raw note, her voice conjures up memories of the first time you heard I Can’t Stand The Rain or the simply beautiful Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down.
Peebles sparkled here in the Hi Records selection of the Barbican’s month-long Back To Memphis festival.
In truth, it has been a misfiring season, promising far more than it could ever have delivered. Mavis Staple struggled during one of the opening gigs, while Ike Turner frustrated fans alongside a poor sub for Tina. In one night, however, the festival was lifted by some familiar faces from Hi Records.
The label was the classy 1970s soul stable which propelled Al Green into music’s hall of fame, guaranteeing the singer a place on the smoochy CDs that fall out of Sunday newspapers. In the shadows, Hi’s other singers are often overlooked.
Yet if you look past Green’s work then you will trip over Peebles’ fine back catalogue and plunder dozens of cracking tunes recorded by Syl Johnson – a guitarist and blues harpist who comes across as a grittier, sleazier Al Green. In some parts, his work is just as good.
At the Barbican on Friday night Peebles and Johnson were reunited. Peebles went first, rolling through Part Time Love, Keep Me Hanging On and Can’t Stand The Rain. She didn’t sing Playhouse but nobody was short-changed.
She is about to embark on her Acoustic Soul tour with manager and keyboard man Paul Brown. I hope it works but, be warned, Brown was the only distraction at the Barbican. His pretty dire backing vocals and some unwarranted madcap grinning, which made him look like he was wearing one of those Bo Selecta plastic masks, could easily have been cut out of this revue.
Meanwhile, Syl Johnson remains just as competent. He is a storyteller whose yarns in between songs were too long for some £25 ticket holders, who shouted for him to get on with it.
But the restless hecklers had misunderstood the format of a soul show.
The storytelling is part of the fun and Johnson is a master at it. He winds up Is It Because I’m Black? with a long tale of how many times it has been sampled and jolts into his stormy version of Take Me To The River, only after explaining how he could have recorded it before Al Green.
At times, you felt like the manipulated, clapping audience in the Palace Ballroom show at end of The Blues Brothers film – never more than when Peebles, Johnson and other Hi contributors Teenie Hodges and Percy Wiggins were up on stage for a 15-minute Sweet Home Chicago encore.
But these musicians were on superb form and it all left you wanting to come back the next day and do it all again.