Music Review: Ruthie Foster, The Truth According to Ruthie Foster

By Steve Morley

It might have been premature to call up-and-coming singer Ruthie Foster’s 2007 album The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster. Its modest pleasures included a refreshingly old-school blues and soul sound, but these failed to justify the title’s lofty claim. A smaller but similar misrepresentation troubles Foster’s latest disc, The Truth According to Ruthie Foster. Foster’s most powerful asset is her naturally soul-drenched voice, which she uses to both evoke and pay tribute to important musical predecessors including Odetta and Aretha Franklin, though only occasionally with a force of conviction that approaches their legendary recordings. Her new disc is a competent and thoughtfully conceived foray into neo-soul and R&B, but to suggest that it’s a singularly personal and cohesive statement is to understate the considerable debt Foster owes to the singers and genres from which she clearly borrows.  

Foster’s choice of cover material runs toward the obscure, drawing from small record labels from the American South. On a remake of “I Really Love You,” a minor early ’70s hit for King Floyd, Foster’s crack session team summons the necessary reggae groove, but neither their performance or Foster’s self-conscious interpretation do much more than respectfully mimic the original. This would be a minor complaint were it not for other similarly hollow remakes and an overall derivative quality that makes the album as much an exercise in musical style as a personal declaration.

Foster’s original songs mirror her vintage influences, but she digs into them with more verve than the cover tunes, and the band follows suit. Powerfully punctuated by a horn section, “Dues Paid in Full” offers a lyric of empowerment and independence while vividly recalling the ’70s funk-rock of Chaka Khan and Rufus and the San Francisco-based jazz-fusion typified by Tower of Power. Late in the album, Foster hits on all cylinders with her effervescent shuffle “Thanks for the Joy,” which affirms the way that gratitude can put life’s trials in perspective. (“Well, I’m here to tell you/ When my heart’s so heavy, ’bout to break in two/ One thing every time brings back my smile/ Well, I start to count my blessings/ That’s all that I need to do/ And I’ve got to give thanks for the joy of living my life with you.”) The track completes an inspirational trilogy that includes a pair of compositions by friend and musical soulmate Eric Bibb, who shares Foster’s affection for blending blues, folk and gospel.

Foster finds the heart of Bibb’s “Love in the Middle,” a checklist of spiritual advice gently and lovingly offered by a deceased parent watching from heaven. (“…Judge not your brothers, they’re doing their best/ Just like you/ Give thanks when you’re happy/ And when you’re feelin’ blue/ Keep your love in the middle of everything you do.”) On the Delta blues-inspired “Joy on the Other Side,” Foster (who lost her own mother in 1996) testifies that the peace and bliss anticipated in the afterlife can also be experienced in the here and now.

On The Truth According to Ruthie Foster, the singer skillfully follows the big footprints of those who went ahead of her. But the truth is that Foster, whose grasp of classic soul sounds partly earned and partly learned, still has a few miles of her own left to walk.

Audio Clips

"Hangin' On"

"I Really Love You"

"Stone Love"

"When It Don't Come Easy"