Search - Billy Price :: East End Avenue

Worth the Wait

tony mowatt | new market, va. | 06/20/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Well, I've been waiting for this kind of top shelf original material (13 of the 14 songs) from Billy Price for a long time. Not that a majority of his previous output hasn't been worth hearing repeatedly, it has -the lone exception being the late 80's Free at Last (Price's only other collection of original material until now) which attempted to turn Mr. Price and his then Keystone Rhythm Band into Huey Lewis and the News, an ironic twist in as much as it was better than Huey Lewis but failed to meet Mr. Price's high standard of comparison -the often incomparable southern soul rarities that he'd been singing since his college days in the late sixties and early seventies -the same material that he still performs. Now, with 'East End Avenue' he and his stellar band (man, give that drummer some!) have achieved parity with that vast collection of songs he has performed over the last five decades. And he's no parvenue. As Geoffrey Himes said, Mr. Price is "not merely an imitation of older, better singers, he's the real thing."

A must have.





"

Soulfully Solid

Larry White | AdultPop.com | 11/15/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Our friend Billy Price, darling of Fair Lawn, NJ, State College and Pittsburgh, Pa and fortunate Rhythm and Blues cognoscenti everywhere, has delivered another soulfully solid cd. `East End Avenue' contains all those elements its predecessors had: a fine array of songs running the gamut of styles from post-bebop to pre-hiphop, soul music; a top-notch band, technically tight and spiritedly loose (morally, we know them not well enough to judge, although Price himself seems as upright as they come...look at the way he nimbly and good naturedly skirts an implied and incriminating line in the title track); and a simply superb singer and musical stylist, Billy Price. This is a terrific batch of songs, nearly all brand-new, though you'd guess them to be vintage. Billy and The Billy Price Band have never sounded more relaxed and comfortable with each other. Proof is the radio-ready "Soul Sailin'", the party atmosphere of "East End Avenue", and the lusty, good humor of `If You Cook Like You Walk". But we have to admit that, for us, when it comes to Billy Price, as with most soul singers, the uptempo numbers are only killing the time before and between the ballads, in this case, the shuffling, bluesy "The Other Side of You", the Dan Penn-penned finale "Faithful and True", and, most particularly, the instant classic "The Price I Paid for Loving You". We don't know if the pun in that title is intended or not. Regardless, it is arguably the best song Price has ever written (with John and Sally Tiven) and gives him a sublime vehicle for a vocal tour de force."