Joe Simon: Lookin’ Back

JOE SIMON IS one of soul’s great deepies, possessor of a richly mellow voice that puts him up there with such deep-throated greats as Jerry Butler and James Carr. His velvet-smooth timbre and lazy, dreamy phrasing epitomize ‘60s country soul, borrowing apparently as much from the diffident inflections of a Lefty Frizzell as from the supper-club crooning of his early influence Arthur Prysock. Never very successful in Britain — too mellow by half for soul cultists besotted with shrieking Picketts and barking Reddings — his languid performances earned him over twenty big American hits between 1966 and 1975.