When was reggie p born

June 1, From The Archives: This article, posted six years ago although the first draft was posted somewhere around , has outdated links, the curse of any commentator who outlasts the constant vagaries of the music business.

Readers, please ignore and excuse the broken links. Here are new links for the songs featured below: Listen to Reggie P. Listen to Reggie P. There are times--most recently this past winter--when I wonder where all the great new music is, times when the overall new product seems "thin," times when I have a dreadful, creeping suspicion that perhaps this nascent soul genre that I've spent so much time and energy trumpeting as the "next big musical thing" has in fact already played itself out.

And if, at the end of the nineties, anyone had told me that the core stars of contemporary Southern Soul--the "cream of the crop," the very artists who had seduced me and turned me into a passionate fan and believer--would all be dead or diminished in less than a decade, cut down at the height of their musical production, who knows if your Daddy B.

Nice would even be here, writing about Southern Soul music, today? Consider the "greats" who have fallen. Johnnie Taylor. Ronnie Lovejoy. Tyrone Davis. Little Milton. Quinn Golden. Jimmy Lewis. Jackie Neal. Frank Mendenhall. Burnside, Gerald Levert and Luther Vandross--and the depth and seriousness of the loss in talent including the top five performers on Daddy B.

Nice's Top Southern Soul chart is nothing short of staggering. Of course, faithful fans are well aware that new "flowers" are continually sprouting up on the graves of each departed hero and heroine.

The question then becomes whether these young and often raw and unseasoned artists can produce legitimate music, music that justifies the attention of the record-buying public, music that taps into the tradition of the fallen stars while at the same time pushing it to fresh, new heights--no small task. Not only must these new artists perform the dual task of recapturing the "magic" of their fallen mentors while pushing ahead with original perspectives of their own, they must do so in a commercially-hostile or commercially-indifferent marketplace in which self-publishing not to mention self-promotion is usually a financial and artistic necessity.

Not surprisingly, the result is a soul-music subculture strewn with both successes and failures. Thus, you have the triumph of Theodis Ealey, one of the best of the new stars, who self-published and self-promoted and finally broke through in a big way with a song--"Stand Up In It"--which very few people indeed ever guessed had "classic" written all over it.

And on the other hand, you have an immensely-talented vocalist, Robert "The Duke" Tillman, who since his initial breakthrough a few years ago with the dazzling "I Found Love," has either chosen not to or simply not had the means to self-publish. Unable to "buy" a record contract since, he has--artistically-speaking--withered on the vine. Your Daddy B. Nice has been slow to acknowledge many of this hardy new breed of Southern Soul newcomers.

Partly, it's due to a natural tendency to avoid the hype that accompanies the latest album "du jour. When I first started hearing Reggie P. Reggie P.

And gradually, as each new listen revealed more sophisticated textures--in the horn charts, in the spare, impeccable lead guitar, in the catchy but understated chorus, but above all in the many-nuanced vocal performance of Reggie P. There was no hype--not even a name or an image of an artist--to divert attention from the primal flow of the music, a mellow-as-yellow melody saved from being overly saccharine by a vocal of gritty originality and intensity. I get so tired of being abused.

I've done all I can do. I just can't seem to please you. Yet the text of the song--the crisis of a passionate, needful man and an indifferent, unnecessarily cruel woman--remained almost a footnote to the mesmerizing musicality of the song.

And the female chorus kept on: "You keep droppin' Why do you keep on droppin'? You keep droppin' Salt on me I don't need. The driving tempo was a refreshing contrast to the laid-back, rocking-the-cradle rhythm of the former, and the gritty, gospel-drenched Reggie P.

The "can't-miss" chords to "Why Me? In one fell swoop, with a hit song and at least four or five other radio-worthy singles, Why Me? When it came time to compile Daddy B. An artist who combines the emotional power of Sir Charles Jones with the vocal chops and intensity of Bobby "Blue" Bland. It dominated Southern Soul radio station airplay in the early months of the year, but it never got boring or grating.

Just better. The Bobby "Blue" Bland comparison was not given lightly. Indeed, I had never likened another musician to Bland, the grandmaster of Southern Soul vocalists.

And yet, there is no one to whom Reggie P. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Reggie P. The CD found Reggie P. Allison , arrived in Led by its title track, the independently-produced disc was everything its forerunners had not been: a tightly-focused, emotionally and musically-overpowering expression of Southern Soul music at its best. The vocal mastery displayed on the album stand-outs--"Why Me?

Wright-style Southern Soul in the new millennium. Nice broke tradition in featuring the seven-years-old song as his featured 1 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single. The following summer, prodded by fan interest, Reggie P. For more details, see Daddy B. Reggie went solo soon after, releasing his first album, Who Am I, in on the Avanti Records label.

It was a sign of good things to come — the title track of his Why Me? Reggie had much future potential in the world of music and will certainly be missed but not forgotten. For several years Pettus was with the Bar-Kays before going solo. Discovered by and a former member of the very well known and loved funk group, The BarKays, Reggie has performed alongside and opened for such headliners as Mel Waiters, The Isley Brothers, R.

Reggie P. Artist descriptions on Last. Feel free to contribute! All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. Don't want to see ads? Upgrade Now.