Stevie Hawkins has spent decades inside American roots music — drumming for Albert King and John Lee Hooker, fronting his own bands, producing other people’s records, stacking awards. He’s one of those lifer musicians who can move between blues, soul, jazz, and country without sounding like he’s trying on costumes. So when he picks up Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” he treats it like what it is: sacred material, but still a song meant to be sung.
His version opens on piano, unhurried and expressive, giving the melody room before the voice even shows up. Then Hawkins comes in and pulls everything into focus. His vocal is gravelly but clean enough to carry the lyric, closer to a soul singer paying respect than to a copy of Russell or Ray Charles. You can hear that he’s sung in clubs and on stages where people actually listen:the lines land, nothing is rushed.
The band behind him is small but tasteful: Levi Adelman on piano, Rusty Holloway on bass, Hawkins himself on drums, and the Loudermilk Chambers Ensemble floating in with horns and strings to widen the picture. The rhythm stays steady, almost pulse-like, so the emotion sits on top instead of getting swallowed. By the outro, when the piano steps forward again and the brass colors the back, it feels like a proper send-off.
What makes this cover work is that he doesn’t update it for the sake of updating it. He just sings it like someone who knows what the words cost. It’s soul, blues, and adult contemporary all at once, made by a musician who knows how to stay out of the song’s way.
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