Eli "Paperboy" Reed
Sings "Walkin' and Talkin' (For My Baby)" and Other Smash Hits!
© 2004 Eli Husock
CD permanently out of stock. Sorry!
Downhome, vital and energetic rhythm and blues.
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Eli "Paperboy" Reed
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Back to the sixties
author: DianeI love this CD. It has a very sixties early rock and roll/blues sound with a contemporary take. If I close my eyes, I am 16 again and doing the Stroll at a high school hop. My 24 year old Allston resident son introduced me to Eli Paperboy Reed and now I am hooked. Need more, please!!!
YOWZA!
author: CassiThis "paperboy" is the genuine article.
Hooks, energy, passion, and honesty
author: tom hyslopThe disc has a killer feel, which is, I'm confident, what Eli was after. I really, make that REALLY, dig the soul-slanted originals, and find the blues covers very strong - "Cool Drink" is the only one I have to check out again as it didn't grab me the first couple of times through; can't identify why. Love the horns on the title track - jubilant and crazed, for lack of better terms (I've heard this sound before - on an old Graham Parker record? Where?). The dirty tone of Eli's guitar across the disc is just right and I think his singing is right on - as the artist says, can a kid from Boston hope for much better? Very inspiring, very exciting for lovers of traditional soul and blues, with plenty of hooks, energy, passion, and honesty to draw in the unsuspecting. Congratulations, Paperboy!
This soul man delivers
author: Boston Globe by James ReedWhen Eli ''Paperboy" Reed (né Eli Husock) sent me a sample of his music, my e-mail response was, ''Thanks very much for your note. PS -- I liked your cover of 'Walkin' and Talkin', ' " which I was convinced was a Ray Charles tune. Only later, when Reed's CD arrived, did it become clear that it wasn't a Ray Charles song at all, but rather an original soul stomper that Reed had written. ADVERTISEMENT I had an even more embarrassing moment listening to the CD, ''Sings Walkin' and Talkin' and Other Smash Hits!" The first song, ''I Just Got to Know," began with a fierce blues guitar lick, followed by a voice, lithe and supple, that wailed, ''I want to know, I want to know, I just got to know/ Why you always stay around." The production quality was either refreshingly vintage or woefully undercooked, and I had to check the CD to make sure Reed hadn't mistakenly sent me a Sam Cooke album. He hadn't. Both anecdotes should give you an idea of how authentic and sincere Reed's music and vision are. Reed, who plays a Tuesday-night residency at ZuZu! this month, is a consummate musician whose interests aren't limited to a single genre or time period, though he does gravitate toward Southern soul and gospel from the 1960s and earlier. He doesn't just like music: He lives it and shares it and talks it nearly to death. A healthy dose of skepticism usually greets Reed. For starters, he's 21 and Caucasian. But along with his six-piece band, comprised of fellow 20-somethings, he wants to turn his generation on to old-school soul music. ''The way to do that is to play with a lot of energy. Kids want to see that energy and will respect that," Reed says over a beer at the Model Café, his neighborhood haunt in Allston. ''We're playing this music the way it ought to sound, and it's very direct music, emotionally direct, too." It was Ray Charles's music that first galvanized his attention. Around seventh grade, Reed's father, who is also a musician, gave him Charles's box set, ''The Birth of Soul," which Reed now calls ''the founding moment of my life. It was just unbelievable. Nothing had ever moved me like that." It was an entree into a world of the masters, particularly his idols, Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin' Wolf. Like all voracious students, Reed moved on to the esoteric and eventually came to admire and respect gospel, which is no small feat for a Jewish kid from Brookline. ''A lot of people, especially the hipsters, can't get into gospel because they don't believe in the message," he says. ''But I'm Jewish, and I dig it." When Reed graduated from Brookline High in 2002, an entrepreneur who was about to purchase a radio station in Clarksdale, Miss., offered to buy Reed's record collection, which he had mentioned online. Reed wasn't interested in selling, but he did want to work for the man. Two weeks after Reed arrived in Clarksdale, the deal fell through, but Reed stayed for another nine months and received an invaluable education, a baptism by fire. He played the juke joints for audiences who demanded the best and with musicians who demanded even more. If he wasn't doing particularly well one night, his host (often legendary Delta bluesmen such as drummer Sam Carr) would tell him to ''sit down. It's not your night." A self-taught musician who plays guitar, harmonica, bass, and piano, Reed already boasts a résumé that reads like that of a seasoned veteran: busking in Harvard Square at 16, jamming with R. L. Burnside on his front porch, playing live on local radio stations, and opening for British garage-rock maven Holly Golightly, whom he met at one of her Middle East shows and instantly befriended. (She later wrote the liner notes to his album.) Last week, Reed launched his website, www.elipaperboyreed.com, where you can check out audio clips, his biography, and tour schedule. Reed says he often worries about how to toe the line between homage and downright imitation. ''Sometimes I feel conflicted about that," he says. ''I don't know what authentic is, but I do know that I'm being authentic to my vision. And we play this music well enough that we don't have to worry about it."