Britain's most heavily promoted black gospel singer LAVINE HUDSON, talks to James Attlee about her humble beginnings, exciting present and the tensions existing between rootsy church and glitzy showbiz.
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"In America, as soon as you walk into a record company you're R&B, before you open your mouth - if you're white, you're pop, without them even hearing your music. At Virgin they told me that I could do what I want, they were just interested in the voice."
Much of her first album's freshness and originality came from the fact that she tapped into an under-exploited well-spring of talent and used producers and musicians from British gospel circles.
"I wanted to utilise that, I wanted to help out a lot of the talent coming up on the scene. At the same time, with the second album I felt that if l did that again I wouldn't grow and I needed to be with people to pull me up. If we're all at the same level it won't work, we can't really grow."
No expense has been spared in surrounding Lavine with names of stellar proportions in an effort to aid this growing process, although such practices are not always a guarantee of artistic success and can paradoxically lead to a diminution rather than an increase in an artist's stature. Over-dominant producers, far from helping artists to project their songs, tend to rob them of individuality, leading to a bland, identikit record product To my ears, parts of 'Between Two Worlds' comes perilously close to soul-by-numbers.
Chief producer Rhett Lawrence has recent production credits with Mariah Carey, as well as having projects with the Bee Gees and Barbara Streisand on his varied CV. Importantly, in Lavine's eyes, he also has gospel in his background, having been brought up in church under Andrae Crouch. Similarly Lemel Humes turns out to be the son of a bishop in New York, although what chiefly attracted Lavine to his production style was his preference for using live bands in the studio.
British producers only get a look in on two tracks - Carl Macintosh of Loose Ends, who mixed "Flesh Of My Flesh" on 'Intervention', co-wrote and produced one of the more commercial-sounding cuts, "Hold On Through The Night", at the insistence of Lavine's A&R man, who demanded "at least one British element" on the album. Meanwhile Nicki Brown, who did a lot of the production on 'Intervention', is relegated to the album's closer, a traditional-flavoured ballad.
The biggest name drafted in on 'Between Two Worlds', notwithstanding the likes of Phil Bailey and Bebe Winans lurking in the backing vocal credits, has to be that of Phil "Buster" Collins -- everybody's favourite middle-aged white soul artist, and not a bad songwriter to boot How did the first single to be released from the album come to be a previously unheard Collins/Lamont Dozier composition called 'All I Need?
"What happened was that Virgin said to me 'who would you most like to work with? So I quoted all these names like Quincey Jones and all these people and I just threw in Phil Collins' name, because 'Another Day In Paradise' was out at the time and I loved that so I said 'Oh yeah, and Phil - ' not really thinking that I would get him because to me he's" (she demonstrates by raising a hand to the ceiling) "up there, you know.
"A couple of weeks later the A&R guy came back and said' Phil will do it' and I was like, whaat? I shocked myself. We got together and Phil said he had some songs left over from' But Seriously' and I should go through them and see if there was anything I liked - if there wasn't he would write something for my voice. I heard 'All I Need' and I fell in love with it because it was such a simple melody line, that*s what l love about his stuff, and the words really meant a lot to me -- so we used it"
There's a clue to the tensions that a performer from Lavine's background experiences in the music business in the tide of the album.
It's called 'Between Two Worlds' because coming from a church background which, is very strict; still being a gospel artist, but reaching out to a non-gospel audience, it causes a pressure on me - I'm constantly walking a fine line. The worlds are far apart, the church world and what we call the secular world. I'm in the middle, almost like a mediator... rooted in the church but reaching out to people who are not in the church. Different churches have reacted differently to what I'm trying to do - traditional black churches are a bit tough on it, they don't give me their full support. More contemporary churches like Kensington Temple and Victory Church are 100 percent behind it I have to hold to what I believe in and not be manipulated by tradition, because a lot of tradition doesn't stem from the Bible, it's a lot of man-made laws on top of that.
"Some people from the gospel scene see me as selling out, because I find that once you have exceeded their audience...They want to cling onto you, they want to hold you for themselves, if they can have you just singing to them in church they'll love to death. Once they're not controlling you and you're doing the same music, they'll shy away from you. It's tricky, but I've dealt with it"
So would she still sing on a bill with some of her gospel peers?
"Oh yeah, it depends on the concert.. I still do a lot of church singing, Victory Church invited me to sing at their convention and I went to sing... I don't want to just be on a gospel bill, because it's the same audience. I like to do gospel and reach a new audience, like when I supported Joe Cocker. I don't see the point of always singing to the same gospel audience -a lot of them don't understand that, but that's the way I feel. My new album is still gospel in that the root of what I'm trying to say is gospel, but it s in a more contemporary form so the people on the street can understand it"
In the 80's I worked for Marshall Arts and did a small tour with Lavine, round Europe supporting Joe Cocker, ending up at the Hammersmith Odeon(as it was then) opening for Davd Peaston, a great little tour.