This has always been one of Yusuf's great skills: making abstract matters of the soul seem of great consequence to the next breath. Even life's simple pleasures, like warmth from a blissed-out sun, may disappear at any moment. You can tell from the grit in his voice that this is not a moment of serene meditation. To sell this alteration, Yusuf has to depart from his customary sweet-and-tidy phrasing to communicate in a rawer, earthier way. It's a deliberate detour, and it takes the song out of church while slightly tempering its exuberance. Curiously, when it comes time to sing the song's signature heaven-reaching line ("You make me haaa-ppy"), he avoids the official melody entirely. Yusuf starts by personalizing the chord sequence slightly, adding tension-making passing chords. Yusuf's "You Are My Sunshine" is a subtle reworking, with a firm Memphis backbeat and a bit of the hardworking show-business panache Joe Cocker used to bring to his covers. Meanwhile, "You Are My Sunshine" and the other covers - many built around the crisp backing of Tinariwen, the band of Tuareg desert-wanderers based in Mali - manage a rare trick, infusing the overused cadences of the blues with a sense of higher purpose and pronounced spiritual seeking. ![]() Its originals sometimes draw on song forms common in folk and bluegrass, and its narratives are laced with characteristically sharp observations about faith, spirituality and the mysterious guises of truth. Split evenly between covers and new originals, it's an album-length evocation of the music that first galvanized Yusuf: the American blues and R&B that captivated London in the early 1960s.īut Tell 'Em I'm Gone, produced by Yusuf with help from Rick Rubin, is hardly a straight-up homage or autopilot nostalgia exercise. Yusuf was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame earlier this year, and Tell 'Em I'm Gone, his first album since 2009's Roadsinger, situates his introspection inside unexpectedly sly and easygoing takes on blues and roots music. But things have changed, and on his latest foray into pop, the 66-year-old singer attempts different modes of expression. It's not the kind of song Cat Stevens would have performed it's too blunt, too winsome. The song's inherent ambiguity - is it aimed at a person, a deity, the life-giving sun? - makes it an interesting cover choice for Yusuf (formerly Cat Stevens), a noted seeker and sometime mystic who for a long stretch of the 1970s ran pop's most lucrative spiritual outpost. The tune is at once sweet and corny, part front-porch country and part humble prayer, alternating expressions of devotion ("You'll never know, dear, how much I love you") with a lover's desperate entreaty ("Please don't take my sunshine away.") The tune was written in the late 1930s, by members of the Rice Brothers hillbilly band according to scholars, the Louisiana singer (and future governor) Jimmie Davis bought the rights, a common practice in that era, and popularized the song with his 1940 recording. ![]() There have been disco versions and polka versions, as well as plenty of earnest renderings - from Bing Crosby to late-career Johnny Cash to Ray Charles, whose 1962 version from the Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music sessions nails the balance of sweetness and melancholy of the little-heard verses. The Sunday-school singalong "You Are My Sunshine" is the rare evergreen that seems to withstand all manner of musical abuse. Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released.
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