Search - Clarence Milton Bekker :: Old Soul

When producer Mark Johnson crisscrossed the globe several years ago to record street musicians on virtually every continent, the result was a recording that transcended geographic and cultural boundaries and connected players and listeners in an unprecedented way. Johnson's Playing for Change: Songs from Around the World, released in 2009, introduced the world to the invisible army of raw talent that exists outside of the conventional marketing and promotional apparatus that drives the music business.

Among those raw talents was vocalist Clarence Milton Bekker, a native of Suriname who developed his craft in his adopted homeland of Holland and eventually took it around the world with little more than a guitar strapped to his back. Propelled by the strength of "Stand By Me" and "Don't Worry," the two tracks he recorded for Playing for Change - and later performed as part of the internationally touring Playing for Change Band - Bekker steps into the spotlight for a solo album, Old Soul, set for release on February 28, 2012, on Playing for Change, a division of Concord Music Group.

Recorded in Santa Monica, California, Old Soul (Playing For Change/Concord Music Group) captures the vintage American soul music that awakened Bekker's musical consciousness when he was still a young boy in Holland in the 1970s and early `80s. Producers Reggie McBride and Mark Johnson, assisted by a crew of veteran soul musicians directly connected to that seminal period, take Bekker on a trip back in time to revisit the powerful sounds originally crafted by iconic figures like Otis Redding, Al Green, Sam and Dave, and many others.