Artist: Rich Chorne' All Stars Featuring Nadine Rae title: Self Titled
Label: Self Issued Web: erols.com/rchorne by Michael Macey (CMG 2006)

The Rich Chorne' All-Stars featuring Nadine Rae is an exercise in funky R&B that is guaranteed to get your feet moving and hips shaking or, as Louis Jordan sang, "Jack you're dead." Kicking it off with a bang is Thinking About It, a rocker that immediately sets the tone for an album full of hot licks, great vocals and smoking grooves. Its opening guitar attack and sultry vocals hint at many good things to come. One look at the lineup will tell you. Besides Rich Chorne' on electric guitars and Nadine Rae on lead and background vocals, the other All-Stars include Tommy Lepson on a variety of keyboards, Jeff Muller and Jay Turner on bass, Gary Crockett and Reinhard Schmidt on drums, Charlie Williams playing harmonica, Caesar Venegas on assorted percussion, Jim Orr handling some keyboards, and Meg Murray lending her voice to a track. When you put this many great players together, it would be darn near impossible not to produce something that had a rump moving factor of 10. With the focus on original material, the songwriting duties are spread out among the band. Chorne' contributes two with Don't Leave Me Hanging and It's Not for You to Say. The former is a soulful rocker, made even more so by Lepson's vocals, and the latter is a slow blues with more of the same from Rae.Lepson's Mood to Sing the Blues is a joyous celebration of "paying your dues", with Rae giving it the conviction that it needs to pull it off. One of the highlights of the album is bassist Muller's Tell Me About It, a call and response duet between Rae and Meg Murray that hints at a chemistry that needs to be explored further. I think those two should make a record together. Rae debuts as a songwriter and shares credit with Chorne' on the lead track and Lepson and Chorne' on This Thing inside Of Me, a funky romp with some of the great Hammond B3 sound for which Tommy Lepson is so well-known.
Since the album is "featuring" Nadine Rae, I'll give her a little space here. The short version is, she hooked up with Chorne' quite by accident when their respective bands were double booked at the same venue. They had a compromise of sorts, when Chorne' asked her to sit in with his band. They been working together ever since. With a dynamic stage personality and a voice to match, she brings her gospel and blues influences into the mix and delivers them with a fervor that translates well to disc. Her performance is spontaneous sounding and full of energy. She can growl, scream and shout with the best of them, as well as purr when she needs to.
Produced by Lepson and Chorne', the album has a lively sound that conveys the feel of their stage show fairly well. It's a nice crisp recording with a lot of bottom, and naturally Nadine's voice is front and center. Whether they're locked into a nice loose groove or rocking out, it sounds like they had a heck of a lot of fun putting it all together.
If your tastes run to good time blues based music, The Rich Chorne' All-Stars Featuring Nadine Rae should work for you. It has all the classic elements of good R&B and a cast of players that deliver the goods. It's full of rhythms designed to get you moving and the blues are played with finesse. Add Nadine Rae's vocals to the mix, and the fact that it's a great party record, and it sells itself.