Deitra Farr
The Search is Over
JSP 284
Now 40, Deitra Farr first attracted national attention in 1993 as a vocalist with the Chicago-based Mississippi Heat. After four years and two discs (Learned the Hard Way and Thunder in My Heart), Farr left to pursue her own career. The band preferred a '50s-styled Windy City blues. On her own, with Johnny Rawls producing, she's also focusing on her soul roots.

Farr wrote seven songs, Rawls four, and they collaborated on one, "Takin' the Long Way Home," a slow blues where (as it does throughout) Rawls' guitar perfectly enhances the mood. Farr once said she was interested "in affairs of the heart," and a good example is "Stealin' Your Love," on which she duets with Rawls in a steamy saga of "meeting on the cheatin' side of town."

Blues is the dominant motif, and Farr's smooth, rich voice effectively captures the nuances of such uplifting songs as "Must Have Been an Angel," with its cheery riffs courtesy of the horn-section trio and a tasty B-3 solo by Roosevelt "Mad Hatter" Purifoy, and "This I Know to Be True," offering a catchy groove and searing tenor saxophone solo by Rodney "Hot Rod" Brown. If you're in the mood for a real blues singer, as the title explains, your search is over.

-- Miles Jordan


This page and all contents are © 1998 by Blues Access,
Boulder, CO, USA.