Do What's Right
by: Jack Pearson
(Candlefly)
Jack Pearson is one of our greatest living guitar players. Like many others, I fondly recall the brief tenure he enjoyed as a member of The Allman Brothers Band, and the bootlegs of his shows with them at Atlanta’s Fabulous Fox Theatre are among my most prized possessions.
I finally got to see Jack play live back on 2005 when our mutual friend Ray Brand passed away. We had a memorial concert in Huntsville, Alabama that turned out to be nothing short of a Southern Superjam. Jack joined Lee Roy Parnell, Tommy Crain, George McCorkle and many others that Sunday, and it was stellar.
As a songwriter and performer, they don’t get much better than Pearson, and Do What’s Right stands as a testament to that factoid. Eight songs, several of which clock in old school at over ten minutes each, and a band that includes his wife Elizabeth on bass, Dennis Wage on B-3, and Doug Belote on drums, make this a red hot album that features some ultra-fine guitar work from this Southern fried master.
All of the songs are written or co-written by Jack, save the lone Rev. Gary Davis cover, “Oh Glory, How Happy I Am,” a Piedmont blues classic, done well by Pearson.
There’s a true spirit swirling around the music of this record, and it comes through loud and clear. It’s the kind of music that just makes you feel like smiling. And that, my friends, is something special.
- Michael Buffalo Smith