by vivrant thang on dresden soul symphony

I am truly slipping on my stanning duties.

I saw that Bilal was going to be in Germany back in April of this year. However, I had no idea that he had joined Dwele, Tweet, and underrated German female soul singer Joy Denalane for the Dresden Soul Symphony concert, where they performed classic soul hits backed by the MDR Symphony Orchestra.

The concert was broken up into four movements which included some of my favorite classic soul hits such as:

• (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (original: Aretha Franklin)
• Lovin You (original: Minnie Ripperton)
• Midnight Train To Georgia (original: Gladys Knight and the Pips)
• A Song For You (original: Leon Russell)
• You’re All I Need To Get By (original: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell)
• Let’s Stay Together (original: Al Green)
• It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World (original: James Brown)
• Me and Mrs. Jones (original: Billy Paul)
• Betcha Bye Golly Wow! (original: Stylistics – I LOVE this song. The Norman Conners/Phyllis Hyman version will be my wedding song)
• Sir Duke and Master Blaster (Jammin) (original: Stevie Wonder)
• Love Train (original: The O’Jays)
• Everything Is Everything (original: Lauryn Hill – guess we can consider this a classic huh?)

A DVD of the concert will be released. Check out footage of Tweet and Joy performing “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.”

The CD was released on October 24th. Many thanks to my loyal reader Soul UK for hooking me up. I’ll share the love by posting a few of my favorite songs. Since re-imagining classic soul songs seems to be the “thing” lately (Kenny Lattimore’s Timeless and Seal’s Soul are recent examples) I am learning to try and not compare them to the original.

“Sir Duke”

“A Song For You”

“Me and Mrs. Jones”

“Everything Is Everything”

Let me know what you think of what these artists did with these songs in the comments. Or are you over albums covering soul classics? I think you at the very least have to admit that this is an interesting blend of talent!