Beres Hammond has a lived-in voice that might remind some of the late soulful beach n street crooner, Ted Hawkins.
Hammond once wrote a minor reggae ditty called Groovy Little Thing ; Hawkins, who died on New Year s Day 13 years ago, wrote Groovy Little Things for his last album, released in 1994.
The similarities mostly end there; the major dissimilarity being that Hammond is alive and well.
He s in town as part of the For the Love of It reggae tour including Marcia Griffiths, the Harmony House Singers, and Leon the People in a collection of lovers rock artists. (Lovers rock is an R B-influenced, smooth-as-a-hookah genre of romantic reggae music.)
Griffiths, once a member of Bob Marley s legendary backing group, The I-Threes, has scored some reggae hits here and there on her own, including Melody Life ; she s had some success working over American pop-soul hits, too.
Her versions of Band of Gold, First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Put a Little Love in Your Heart, Gypsy Man and others are typically pleasing syncopated variations on the originals.
If you want to go back in trivial history for a moment, hear her version of Neil Diamond s Play Me. It created a weird answer song (no doubt unintended as such) to Diamond s shockingly stupid appearance in blackface, singing anvil-on-head-bad soul music in The Jazz Singer (a flick still meriting serious consideration in any discussion of the worst music movies of all-time).
Time for more trivia: who was the youngest conductor of Budapest s Royal Opera House?
In his lifetime, Dorati also conducted the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Stockholm Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
In his long career, he also made nearly 600 recordings.
The Minnesota Orchestra pays tribute to Dorati by performing his Cello Concerto.
The orchestra will also perform the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky.
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