11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Richard Manuel' Review: The Band's ‘Mournful, Soulful' Voice
Almost four decades after his death at age 42, the pianist and singer Richard Manuel, whose voice was an essential element of the influential rock group the Band, remains an enigma today. He may be better remembered for the sad circumstances of his death than for his contribution to the fusion of rock, country, blues and folk music that is now called Americana. The Band was renowned for the three-part harmonies produced by Manuel, Rick Danko and Levon Helm, yet the group's members viewed Manuel as the lead singer. His performances on songs such as 'I Shall Be Released' illustrate why Eric Clapton called Manuel's voice 'the most mournful, soulful thing I'd ever heard.'
The story of how a group fronted by Canadians almost single-handedly established Americana as a genre has been told before. In 'Richard Manuel,' the music writer and podcaster Stephen T. Lewis aims to shift our focus, placing Manuel at the center of the Band's fascinating history. For Mr. Lewis, Manuel's talents and weaknesses were linked: 'Richard's ability to receive and transmit through song was his gift,' the author writes. 'His inability to control his gifts, his downfall.'
Born in 1943, Manuel grew up in Stratford, Ontario, about 150 miles northeast of Detroit. Though he loved singing in church, his first and only formal musical instruction came in the form of piano lessons when he was around 8 years of age. Those lasted until the teacher slammed the lid on his fingers for, he said, playing 'a note that wasn't on the paper.' He continued playing on his own, inspired by late-night blues and gospel broadcasts crackling through the air from Nashville's WLAC, radio shows that young Richard and his future bandmates treated, as Mr. Lewis writes, 'like an underground club for renegade youth.'
By the time Richard was 16, his first band, the Revols, was playing several gigs a week, and he was eagerly experimenting on his piano to make it more audible through primitive sound systems. On stage, the shy, big-nosed teen transformed, singing Jerry Lee Lewis and Bobby Bland songs with gripping authenticity. When the Revols shared a bill with rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins in 1961, Manuel's aching version of 'Georgia on My Mind' prompted Hawkins to offer him a job.
