Jon Cleary: Pin Your Spin : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Singer-pianist Jon Cleary is English by birth but Dixie by nature, with a low, steamy croon and a pumping-ivory drive as funky as the city he has long called home: New Orleans. Cleary can be an absolute monster on his own; I've seen him pin a full house to the back wall at Tipitina's with an explosive solo charge through Professor Longhair's "Big Chief." But Cleary's full-combo R&B is as broad, deep and roiling as the Mississippi River, the combined swinging product of local keyboard tradition, Cleary's vocal-songwriting flair for moody Seventies soul and the spunky-Meters roll of his Gentlemen. Pin Your Spin is fragrant with the mixed pepper of classic Stevie Wonder, vintage Allen Toussaint, Dr. John's Gris-Gris, the Average White Band's "Pick Up the Pieces" and, in the closing instrumental, "Zulu Strut," the energy and memory of the late piano god James Booker.

DAVID FRICKE
(April 21, 2004)