Richard Elliot Inner City Blues

In The Zone includes a simmering, hypnotic retrosoul cover of Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler), a Marvin Gaye staple whose original instrumental version marked Washington s first session as a leader. Beyond that, the collection is driven by 9 powerful retroflavored original songs penned by Elliot and coproducer Jeff Lorber, who share a colorful collaborative history over the past 10 years. The two played numerous shows in the early 2000s as part of the allstar Groovin For Grover tour (with Gerald Albright and Paul Taylor) and have worked together on various tracks on Elliot s recordings Crush (2001), Ricochet (2003), Metro Blue (2005), RnR (Elliot s hit dual 2007 recording with trumpet great Rick Braun) and Rock Steady. The interesting thing about my desire to pay homage to the wonderful array of R B and jazz I grew up with on these last two recordings is that I actually wanted to do it as far back as Metro Blue, says Elliot of the album whose