In The Observer Music Monthly last weekend, Paul Morley was lamenting the “steamed-up praise” for every new act that inevitably leads to disappointment when you finally hear the band or its album: “You think, I wish I hadn’t been expecting the greatest thing ever, because compared to being the greatest thing, this is just one of those things.”
When you’ve read nothing, on the other hand, you can be more than pleasantly surprised. Just under two years ago, I arrived at the Barbican in London on a Saturday for one of a series of concerts in its excellent “It Came from Memphis” season. The bill included Mavis Staples, Bonnie Bramlett and Tony Joe White. But the most memorable performance of the evening was by an outfit I’d never heard of playing free in the foyer: the James Hunter Band. They played timeless, feelgood R&B, and their lead singer had a voice that at times put me in mind of Sam Cooke or Jackie Wilson. I Googled his name the following day and discovered he was in his forties, from Colchester, Essex, and had released a couple of albums, one of them on Ace, the label that distributes in Britain the back catalogue of Stax. Two tracks on the album were  duets with Van Morrison, who, according to another site, had described Hunter as “one of the best voices and best-kept secrets in British R&B and soul”. Shortly afterwards, I heard that two Americans, Steve Erdman and Kimberly Guise, astounded that Hunter wasn’t signed to any label, had formed a company, Go Records, specifically to record him and to release a new album, prophetically entitled People Gonna Talk, in the States. Guise sent me an early copy. I loved it, and tried to sell a piece about Hunter to the Telegraph Review section, but they didn’t share my enthusiasm.
Since then, Hunter’s secret has got out. He’s been a huge success on the road in the States (where the Telegraph got round to interviewing him in July 2006). People Gonna Talk got a mention in many lists of albums of 2006 and was nominated for a Grammy.
Hunter is now briefly back home before another stint in the States and then a tour of Europe as support to Bryan Adams. I saw him at the 100 Club in London this week (where, according to his home town’s paper, he met his wife of five weeks 18 months ago), and he was as good as I remembered from the Barbican: a real crowd-pleaser who’s finally getting his dues. He may not be the future of rock’n’roll, but he’s more than just one of those things.