.Rodger Collins

Through My Eyes

After cutting a series of singles for the Galaxy and Fantasy labels
between 1960 and 1973, including the 1967 Bay Area R&B and pop
smash “She’s Looking Good” (successfully covered the following year by
Wilson Pickett) and the cult classic “Foxy Girls in Oakland,”
Texas-born, San Francisco-bred singer-songwriter Rodger Collins retired
from recording and performing. He did issue one little-noticed hip-hop
single in 1987 but otherwise focused on writing tunes, under his Muslim
name Hajji Sabrie, for such artists as Buddy Ace, Charles Brown, and
Sugar Pie DeSanto. Now, 48 years after making his first record, the
Oakland resident has issued his debut CD.

It seems he’d been working in the studio all along during his
hiatus, as Through My Eyes contains a killer version of “Mystery
Train” featuring guitar solos by Jerry Garcia (who died in 1995) and
piano by the recently deceased Merl Saunders. The other dozen songs
were written or co-written by the singer and employ a variety of
musicians. Drum machines, though imaginatively programmed, fuel many of
the tracks, and bluesman Guitar Shorty turns up on three. “Introducing
a new musical genre,” the booklet cover boldly proclaims. Although an
overstatement, Collins’ music has always been different — he had,
after all, begun his career in the ’50s as a teenage black Elvis
impersonator on a local country-and-western TV show — and his
current sound incorporates elements of rockabilly, blues, soul,
country, jazz, and hip-hop.

Collins scats and even yodels on several numbers. Besides “Mystery
Train,” the program includes three other blues, one featuring the late
Oakland pianist Ed Kelly, but Collins is most inventive vocally when
playfully riding the syncopated funk grooves of tunes like “In My
Wildest Dream” and a remake of “She’s Looking Good.” (Garden Tree
Media)

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