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'It Rains Love' On Lee Fields And The Expressions

Lee Fields
Sesse Lind
/
Courtesy of the artist
Lee Fields

You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can sometimes glean a little bit about an artist by the track listing on the cover of their album. Run your finger past the song titles on Lee Fields' latest album, It Rains Love — across "Blessed by the Best," "God Is Real," "Love is the Answer" — and you might rightly guess that Fields is a singer invested in spreading love through soulful music.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first single Fields ever released. He's holding it down in a circle that's getting smaller and smaller. In the last few years, Fields has lost friends and peers like Charles Bradley, who was known as the "Screaming Eagle of Soul," and Sharon Jones, who at one time was Fields' back-up singer. Lee's longtime band, The Expressions, are a who's who of session musicians and sometimes double as The Daptones house band. They perform live in this session.

Fields shares the sage advice he got from legendary preacher and singer Solomon Burke and stories about his early days, including the speakeasy his parents used to run out of their home in North Carolina on weekends. Listen to it all in the player.

Copyright 2019 XPN

Talia Schlanger hosts World Cafe, which is distributed by NPR and produced by WXPN, the public radio service of the University of Pennsylvania. She got her start in broadcasting at the CBC, Canada's national public broadcaster. She hosted CBC Radio 2 Weekend Mornings on radio and was the on-camera host for two seasons of the television series CBC Music: Backstage, as well as several prime-time music TV specials for CBC, including the Quietest Concert Ever: On Fundy's Ocean Floor. Schlanger also guest hosted various flagship shows on CBC Radio One, including As It Happens, Day 6 and Because News. Schlanger also won a Canadian Screen Award as a producer for CBC Music Presents: The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions, a cross-country rock 'n' roll road trip.
Since 2017, John Myers has been the producer of NPR's World Cafe, which is produced by WXPN at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Previously he spent about eight years working on the other side of Philly at WHYY as a producer on the staff of Fresh Air with Terry Gross. John was also a member of the team of public radio veterans recruited to develop original programming for Audible and has worked extensively as a freelance producer. His portfolio includes work for the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, The Association for Public Art and the radio documentary, Going Black: The Legacy of Philly Soul Radio. He's taught radio production to preschoolers and college students and, in the late 90's, spent a couple of years traveling around the country as a roadie for the rock band Huffamoose.