Robert Cray had yet to take the masses by storm with the smoldering blues of “Smoking Gun,” the breakthrough single from his “Strong Persuader” album, when he found himself in Keith Richards’ St. Louis hotel room, having been invited by the Rolling Stone to lend his talents to the filming of “Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.”“And there’s a boombox on the fireplace mantel in his room. So I went over and checked it out and there was this cassette tape. It said, 'Strong Persuader.
It was only a matter of weeks after the filming of those concerts in St. Louis that Cray hit the streets with “Strong Persuader,” a double-platinum breakthrough largely driven by the airplay he received on “Smoking Gun,” a rock-radio hit that peaked at No. 2 on that format. “And then my mom was into Sam Cooke and Bobby 'Blue' Bland. We had Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles and all that stuff coming up.”“The Beatles came out, and I got involved with listening to the radio and playing guitar like all my friends did on the military bases I grew up on,” Cray says.“A couple of my friends who played guitar were listening to Buddy Guy and B.B. King and all that,” he says.
“That kind of set the whole record in motion. We started looking for other R&B tunes going in that kind of direction and picking out some favorites from the past. We picked a Bobby 'Blue' Bland song; one by Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. And then we started putting some songs together ourselves.”Working with Jordan again was a joy for Cray.
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