“Leak in this Old Building” – Eddie Ruth Bradford

“Leak in this Old Building”
Eddie Ruth Bradford
From the CD Reflections (street date: July 14, 2009)

Clarksdale, Mississippi is a great address for a blues singer and apparently for a traditional gospel singer, too, because that’s where Eddie Ruth Bradford lives. The Stellar-nominated Bradford, with her deep, expressive alto, is a Gospel Singer (capitalization intentional) well educated in the old-school ways of church wrecking.

It makes sense, then, that Bradford’s third CD, Reflections, contains a hymnbook full of traditional fare. “Leak in this Old Building,” Bradford’s current radio single from the new album, is a neo-traditional arrangement of an old standard. The beat lumbers forward with a heavy blues strut as the background vocalists harmonize like an early seventies quartet in answer to Bradford’s calls.

The track fades just as Bradford really warms up, so I wish it would have continued for much longer. I suspect it is extended in live performance, and I’ll bet that’s phenomenal to behold.