Take Your Shoes Off

1	Love Gone To Waste / Robert Cray Band 4:39
2	That Wasn't me / Robert Cray Band 4:45
3	All the Way / Robert Cray Band 5:11
4	There's Nothing Wrong / Robert Cray Band 4:54
5	24-7 Man / Robert Cray Band 3:22
6	Pardon / Robert Cray Band 5:49
7	Let Me Know / Robert Cray Band 4:25
8	It's All Gone / Robert Cray Band 5:21
9	Won't You Give Him (One More Chance) / Robert Cray Band 3:11
10	Living Proof / Robert Cray Band 5:31
11	What About Me / Robert Cray Band 6:47
12	Tollin' Bells / Robert Cray Band 5:57

Barnes & Noble

Robert Cray celebrates 25 years of touring this year and he thinks it’s about time to lay back and enjoy himself. And that’s just what Cray and his band do on TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF, a set of soul that props its feet on the console of the Hi and Stax studios of the ‘60s. The opening cut, “Love Gone to Waste,” was even co-written by Willie Mitchell, who producing credits include the best of Al Green and Ann Peebles. But the real news in this bluesy set is Cray’s voice. Rather than straining to be heard over rockin’ instrumentation, Cray’s vocals are out front and for the first time, full-bodied and husky, wrapping around the lyrics like a velvet cape. He comes across on both ballads and up tempo numbers as what an earlier album titled hinted at, a Strong Persuader. Cray’s songwriting too has matured and instead of taking off from the blues tunes of the ‘60s originals like “Pardon” and “All the Way” (which his wife Sue Turner-Cray co-wrote) are stories from today’s relationships. TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF is Cray’s most interesting set to date. Roberta Penn

All Music Guide

It's evident right from the start that Robert Cray's aiming for a Memphis soul groove on Take Your Shoes Off. Willie Mitchell of Hi Records fame co-wrote and did the horn arrangements for the lead-off cut, "Love Gone to Waste," and Jim Pugh's burbling organ would have fit snugly into the mix of an early '70s Al Green record. The blues is not missing from this effort, but is most present in Cray's usual assertive blues guitar lines. Otherwise, this is far more appropriately pegged as a blues-soul album, or even just a retro-soul album, than a straight blues one. Cray, indeed, only writes about half of the songs, covering soul classics identified with Mack Rice's "24-7 Man" and Solomon Burke's "Won't You Give Him (One More Chance)," as well as Willie Dixon's "Tollin' Bells." No one would be claiming that this disc plows new territory, but to Cray's credit, he fits the quasi-Hi and (less frequently) Stax-type grooves with an unforced ease. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds -- for Cray or anyone in the late 1990s -- and it's frankly more interesting than a straightahead blues album from the singer-guitarist would have been. Richie Unterberger