When I first heard that john Oates was making a ‘country’ record, I was skeptical. I wasn’t so sure how one half of the 80s blue-eyed-soul band Hall & Oates would sound on such a record, his influence on Jimmy Wayne notwithstanding. Still, from the opening of Mississippi Mile, it’s pretty apparent that John Oates isn’t singing mainstream country music or even traditional country music. Rather, he’s made an ode to the southern blues and roots music that inspired him. Primarily a collection of cover tunes, Oates and co-producer Mike Henderson (of The SteelDrivers and noted blues solo artist) have crafted a treat of an album.
The title track opens the record and it finds Oates singing in a voice that is unlike anyway we’ve ever heard the soulful crooner before. The vocal is raw, real and the song features an expert collection of harmony vocalists like Bekka Bramlett and Jonell Mosser. Elvis’s classic “All Shook Up” doesn’t sound anything remotely like you might have expected it to sound before while Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone To Love” brings some of Oates soulful balladry out but the vocal is still raw and different than what we’re used to from all those Hall & Oates recordings. He even re-works “You Make My Dreams Come True,” an old Hall & Oates recording that now feels more akin to something you’d find on a Joe Cocker record.
You know, the comparison to Joe Cocker is an apt one on a lot of the vocals have that gritty, sand-paper quality to them in the songs here. The choices of classic songs and new songs is well spread out and at the end of the day Mississippi Mile is the kind of appealing, blues and folk or ‘Americana’ record that is purely a celebration of the blues and rock of the south.
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