Ed Randazzo and the Soul of a Man...

Ed Randazzo likes to talk. I’m so used to communicating via text messages and emails that it’s jarring when somebody actually rings my phone. And if I don’t answer and Ed’s got 10 minutes of things to say, he’ll leave me a 10 minute voice mail. It’s refreshingly personal. So when he’s talking to you, you get the feeling that there’s no place in the WORLD he’d rather be. His enthusiasm is relentless, and he wants you to share it. He doesn’t dabble in anything. Once something has its hooks in him, he baptizes himself in it. He dunks his head in the water over and over again, and comes up for air only long enough to insist you to join him.

And it’s hard to say no. Which is why when he called me 2 years ago and asked if I could help write some songs for his first new record in years, I said yes without hesitation. He sounded like a man who had just shaken up the bottle, but just needed a little help in getting the cap off. It wasn’t desperation. It was more like love. He was in love with the idea of a record that was already finished in his head. I was truly honored that he asked me. I know what music means to him. The fact that he trusted me was a kick in the ass I needed too.

Ed is a jazz singer and a torch singer and a pop singer and a blues singer and a wizened folkie and a rock and roll star, so I have no idea what category a record store would put his new record in. It’s called “Wishing On a Train” and it staggers from place to place like a drunk on a sidewalk. Originals and covers. Loud stuff and quiet stuff. Music that races and music that pulls on the reigns. He has his own vision, but remains a graceful collaborator. All he asks is that you care as much as he does.

After our initial conversation, within a week or so we had the guts of 2 songs done, and ideas for a few more. There was no fixed process. He’d have an idea. A melody or a verse, and I might flesh it out. The title track came from a lyric I had that never had a tune. Producer Bret Alexander had a tune with no lyrics. Ed stitched them together and sang the shit out of it. Each piece was just waiting to be connected to the others. Sometimes that’s the way it works. “Stone-Cold Envy Blues” was something I had lying around, and Ed and Bret dirtied it up, which is what it was missing. “Saint Cecilia” is a wonderful pop song that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Badlees record. “Fix Me a Pallet” is like a field recording tracked down by Alan Lomax, and Ed suddenly sounds 100 years old, jolted by Bret’s acoustic slide guitar. This is music for grown-ups.

Ed is forever searching. The blues isn’t just something you sing. It’s something that hits you upside the head sometimes, and it can take you down. It had been entirely too long since he made new music, and I got the sense talking to him that some hellhounds had been having their way with his heels. The blues turns you inward. It makes you feel all alone even in a crowded room. Lincoln called it “the tired spot”. Churchill called it “the black dog”. When Ed picked up that phone 2 years ago and called his friends, it was the sound of a man getting back up again. It was the sound of a whisper on the verge of the roar that would open his new record.

If you’ve never seen Ed, and only heard his voice, meeting him in person is the most “no fucking way” moment of all time. He sounds as big as Howlin’ Wolf, but can probably fit inside Wolf’s guitar case. I do not claim to understand the cosmos, so I cannot explain this disconnect, but I’d like to think it was some deity’s way of fucking with us, just to keep us on our toes.

It’s the perfect encapsulation to what bluesman Blind Willie Johnson called “the soul of a man”.

I'm going to ask the question, please answer if you can
If anybody surely can tell me, just what is The Soul Of A Man

You ain’t gonna get that answer by judging a book by its cover, son.

You might not get it listening to “Wishing On a Train”, but it’s gonna get you closer. Or, to use Sly Stone’s words, it’s gonna take you HIGHER.

In a bit…

—tf