Two with soul

Like soul music itself, which was born in the church, O.V. Wright began as a gospel singer before crossing over into secular music. Johnny Rawls worked with his mentor Wright in the 1970s, but had to be coaxed into making this powerhouse CD, Remembering O.V. But he wastes no time, getting into the groove on the first track, “Into Something (Can’t Shake Loose),” an uptempo, horn-pumping description of being overcome by passion that Wright had recorded just three years before his death in 1980. Accompanied by another soul vet, Otis Clay, on this and two other songs, Rawls revives a batch of Wright’s classics that include “Eight Men, Four Women” (the makeup of the jury that found him “guilty of loving you”) and “Blind, Crippled and Crazy” (rather than have his heart broken again). Soul music is a lotta heart and a lotta hurt, and Lou Pride—another former gospel singer (who died a few months after finishing this CD)—really gets into the hurt with the title track of Ain’t No More Love in This House, as well as on the heart-wrenching “Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast,” a plea from his young daughter who’s running after him as he’s walking away from their home. And on “I Didn’t Take Your Woman” (“you gave her to me”), he shows how another man’s mistreatment of his woman resulted in loss.