With the considerable aid of producer Johnny Sandlin and especially the Muscle Shoals Horn Section, Bonnie Bramlett has gathered a clutch of R&B classics and just wailed them out, with feeling and precision. Here, she often duets with a male voice—Allman on "Two Steps from the Blues," Hall on "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby," Dobie Gray on "Never Gonna Give You Up"—but one never gets
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the feeling she's auditioning a replacement for Delaney. She realizes that to be most effective she needs to
react to some aspect of the music: the words, a particular instrument or another voice. There is little of the creator in Bramlett, a fact she tried to conceal on her previous solo albums, but she has discovered ingenious ways to spur her interpretive talents on
Lady's Choice.The sore white thumb that sticks out in this package is Bob Dylan's "Forever Young," made overbearingly melodramatic by Bramlett's earnestness. The rest of the album is reserved for black gems from the Fifties and Sixties, and every one is more than well done; a couple of them—"You Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go"—rival the definitive original recordings.
Bramlett and producer Sandlin, who, for the most part, has doctored the arrangements to fit Bramlett comfortably, are occasionally daring; the reproduction of the Sam and Dave single "Hold On I'm Coming" is startling, and Bonnie yowls it commandingly; her collaboration with Allman on "Two Steps from the Blues" renders the song instantly original, as if it had been improvised in the studio and recorded on the first take.
While one senses that Lady's Choice was very coolly planned to get Bonnie Bramlett's career back on the tracks, this in no way sours the spontaneity of the album. More than a pleasant surprise, the LP places her among the best female interpreters of pop and soul music. (RS 223)
KEN TUCKER
