In talking about a really good but largely forgotten record made 34 years ago by an obscure soul singer, it's tempting to paint a picture of strife and cruel fate, of a tragic figure unfairly overlooked in his heyday. Numero Group deserves credit for resisting this tried-and-true narrative in its attempt to introduce a wider audience to Willie Wright and his extremely appealing 1977 effort, Telling the Truth, the only all-original album he ever released. Instead, liner notes authors Ari Leichtman and Ken Shipley sketch a story of a musician who, despite a lack of commercial success, resolutely followed his own muse as an artist and his own whims as a man. This assessment is perfectly reflected in Wright's music itself-- a radical blend of sounds delivered in a mostly laidback, untroubled style.
Telling the Truth has its moments of deeply felt poignancy, but its real value lies in its highly creative and endlessly listenable assimilation of soul, pop, rock, and folk signifiers. A refusal to cleave to one particular genre hindered Wright's commercial prospects throughout his career, which found him bouncing back and forth between New York and Boston for most of the late-60s and early-70s before settling in the mid-70s on Nantucket Island. Given that the prevailing sound of R&B at that time was glossy funk and Philly soul, Wright's music is an idiosyncratic marvel. Basically, imagine Lou Rawls fronting Van Morrison's Astral Weeks-era band with a Duane Allman soundalike occasionally dropping by to lay down some lyrical guitar lines and you've got a pretty good idea. Flute filigrees and gently tugged basslines abound, and Wright's earthy vocals perfectly complement the mellow, spacious grooves of "Nantucket Island", "I'm So Happy Now", "Indian Reservation", and "It's Only Life, That's All"-- the latter two tunes also tossing off shades of Dylan and the Band's supremely contented mid-70s rambles. Much of Telling the Truth is ideal summertime barbecue fodder, though Wright also demonstrates facility with babymaking fare on the casually seductive "Lady of the Year" and "In the Beauty of the Night".
The final three tracks on this reissue actually predate the recording of Telling the Truth, and reveal a younger Wright who was nonetheless so much older then in temperament. His reading of Curtis Mayfield's "Right on for the Darkness" is gripping, but the seriousness of his own compositions "Africa" and "Lack of Education" doesn't make up for their undistinguished presentation. By contrast, Wright's insights on Telling the Truth proper may be mostly puddle-deep, but they're delivered with such beguiling charm that it hardly matters.
