ALLA FINE BUIO DELLA STRADA...

“Sweet Soul Music” – better known as the Porretta Soul Festival - takes place every year in mid-July in the small and welcoming town of Porretta Terme, situated in Northern Italy on the border of the province of Tuscany and about an hour away from Bologna on the train. It’s a wonderful experience to get off that train and cross the bridge into a town full of friendly people, who may not all speak the same language but who are all united by the language of soul music.  

Everybody in Porretta gets behind this festival, with most of the local shops featuring window displays built around each year’s show poster and t-shirts. The town’s handful of hotels are all very welcoming, despite space being at a premium and many of them selling out within hours of the announcement of each year’s show dates. Local bars and restaurants are excellent and the proprietors are generally happy to try out their English speaking skills on those too lazy to learn even a few words of Italian! There’s also a special ‘soul food market’ featuring regionally sourced food and drink, running the length of the Plaza Della Liberta and mostly staying open until after each night’s show finishes.

The festival itself is spread over four nights, with Rufus Thomas Park – and yes, it really IS called Rufus Thomas Park, all year round – playing host to an international line up of talent, and one that still tries to uphold the Festival’s original aim of being a tribute to promoter Graziano Uliani’s all-time favourite singer, Otis Redding. For the past 28 years, Graziano – who has also managed some of Italy’s own top talent of the past 30 years, including local superstar Zucchero and the blind operatic tenor Andrea Bocelli - has been a tireless promoter of the kind of music that he fell in love with in the 60s, regularly flying from Italy to the American South to personally persuade the artists who have appeared at Porretta to come to his festival and entertain the crowds with ‘his’ kind of music.  

It was Graziano who persuaded the local council to name the specially-constructed concrete amphitheatre Rufus Thomas Park, as well as getting the name of the local Porretta street that he once lived in changed to ‘Via Otis Redding’. If that isn’t dedication to soul, then I don’t know what is. Every year the festival presents a ‘lifetime achievement’ award to someone who has done much to further the cause of soul music in the past 50 years. Hopefully someone will present one to Graziano before he eventually retires, as few deserve such an honour more than the genial Sr. Uliani….

Thursdays at the festival are generally given over to a plethora of European bands who specialise in 60s soul covers, giving a largely local audience a good time and a fun night out before the event proper begins. On Friday and Saturday night, the featured US acts all perform something close to a full set before coming back on Sunday as part of an ‘All Star Revue’ to sing just a couple of numbers – frequently, different songs to those which they performed on a previous night.  

Over the course of the festival’s existence, most of the leading Southern Soul survivors have played Porretta. Sadly, many who have appeared at or headlined the festival down the years are no longer with us, including Solomon Burke, Percy Sledge, James Carr, Eddie Hinton and the Festival’s favourite son, Rufus Thomas - or ‘Rufulone’ as many of the locals still refer to him. This year, in the lead up to the festival, a mural honouring Rufus was unveiled on the Piazza Della Liberta –  just around the corner from Rufus Thomas Park and close to Il Califfo, the town’s only pub where singers and fans alike frequently gather after the show for a ‘mutual debriefing’ of each evening’s events. Porretta Soul even has its own ‘National Anthem’, with Memphis musician Charlie Wood’s ‘Rufus Thomas Is Back In Town’ played to kick off each night’s entertainment. 

Even with so many 60s southern soul heroes and heriones gone, Graziano still manages to find plenty of top quality acts to entertain the sell-out crowds every year.  This 28th year’s line up of legends included former Goldwax artist Willie Walker, Derek ‘Daddy Rollin’ Stone’ Martin, singer-songwriter extraordinaire Prince Phillip Mitchell, drummer-to-the-stars Bernard ‘Pretty' Purdie, founder member of the Memphis Horns Joe Arnold and octogenarian Sugar Pie De Santo, making her third appearance as a Porretta headliner. As was former Alston/Waylo artist David Hudson –a Porretta favourite who, on his last appearance there, proposed to his fiancée (and now wife) in mid song, and thus forever won the hearts of all Porretta-goers. 

Younger acts spread across the event included Theo Huff, also making a return and singing sweetly on both his own material and a fine selection of revivals of songs made famous by the likes of Johnnie Taylor and Tyrone Davis. The bluesy Sugar Ray Rayford also impressed, again with both his own material and some well chosen revivals including a pretty special version of Geater Davis/Albert King’s ‘I’ll Play The Blues For You’ which he performed while sitting in the audience. The diminutive Chick Rodgers has quickly become the new Porretta Soul Queen after a couple of extremely well received shows over the last couple of years, while the Japanese funk band Osaka Monaurail kicked the weekend off on Thursday with a set that even the best bands of their chief inspiration James Brown would have been troubled to better.

For all this great stuff, your correspondent’s personal highlights of the weekend – just as they were last year – were the three sets by Anthony Paule’s band and its singer Frank Bey. The Bey Paule Band is one of the best things to happen to soul music in recent times, with a raft of great original material at their fingertips courtesy of Paule’s wife Christine Vitale and a smart line in revivals that ranges from Charles Brown’s ‘Hard Times’ to Bobby Bland’s ‘Ain’t That Loving You’ to Otis Clay’s ‘If I Could Reach Out And Help Somebody’ to a masterful 6/8 southern style treatment of a song you may think you never want to hear again until you hear their emotive performance of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.  I would go as far as to say that Frank and the band’s recording of Vitale’s song ‘I Just Can’t Go On’ is the best southern soul record in at least 30 years and possibly longer. Yes, it is THAT good…

Besides performing their own sets, Anthony and the band also backed up the majority of the visiting acts, which required an awful lot of pre-festival preparation on their part and the learning of hundreds of songs. Given the quality of the musicians who have previously done this, it says much for those in Paule’s outfit that they rank among the very best backing bands - and indeed might well be THE best backing band, overall – that the festival has ever seen or heard.  It’s to be hoped that they will be returning to Porretta next year in both capacities.  They have certainly more than earned the right to do so…

Once you’ve been to Porretta Soul, it’s hard to ignore the urge to return. Graziano has hinted that he might stop when the Festival reached its 30th edition, due to the fact that vintage acts are getting thinner on the ground – although the capacity crowds each year suggest that he would disappoint a whole heap of people if he does. However IF he does, we still have a few more gatherings to enjoy and even though the next one is at least 50 weeks away, regular attendees like myself are already looking forward to what’s in store for Porretta Soul 2016…