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On Joan Osborne's major label debut, Relish (1995), she sold herself as a blues queen and she had some success with it although she often came on too strong in the process. It felt as if she was trying too hard. Later, on Pretty Little Stranger (2006) she took a turn towards being a singer-songwriter, again with only modest artistic success. Recently, she teamed up with rocker Jackie Greene to form Trigger Hippy and they released their new quintet's debut CD in 2014. Once again she gave us some very good moments but, as it turns out, both Greene and Osborne are more rewarding separately than they are together. Those albums are worth mentioning because it's time to reiterate something that I've written before: Osborne's greatest strength is as an outstanding interpreter of other R&B artists' work. There aren't many singers who are more comfortable with someone else's material more so than with their own but Osborne is one of the rare exceptio...

If you haven't heard of Trigger Hippy yet you need to take this opportunity to make themselves known to you now. This (almost) supergroup brings together five people who already have good reputations in the music industry even if they are unknown to you. Joan Osborne ("One of Us") and Jackie Greene are excellent singers and the main composers of this fine new band. You should already be familiar with Osborne and hopefully, Greene too. He's a singer-songwriter who plays guitar and keyboards and has made several very good solo albums over the course of the last decade with influences ranging from Bob Dylan to John Mellenkamp, to The Beatles (You've got to hear his hard-charging, live cover of "Taxman.") Rounding out the band are bassist Nick Grovnik, a well known session musician in Nashville, Tom Bukovic, a guitarist who also makes his living there, and Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman. Trigger Hippy is a boisterous, rock outfit with traces of ...

I'm a late comer to Joan Osborne. I liked the same songs from her 1995 debut album, Relish , that radio loved, "St. Theresa," "Spider Web," "Pensacola," and her huge hit "One Of Us," but not much else. It took listening to her fabulous cover version of "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted" from the soundtrack of Standing In the Shadows of Motown for me to fully appreciate her vocal gifts. How Sweet It Is is a very fine set of cover versions of classic R & B mixed in with some vintage rock songs. The CD opens with two great tracks, The Spinners' "I'll Get Around," and Aretha's "Think." A cover of Stevie Wonder's "Love's In Need Of Love Today" is especially nice and her version of "Smiling Faces Sometimes" with Isaac Hayes, is as good as the original. Dave Mason's "Only You Know And I Know" rocks and surprisingly she tackles Jimi Hendrix's ...