The album includes R&B luminaries, which includes Smokey Robinson, Ray Parker Jr., Earth Wind & Fire, Joni Sledge, Sam Moore, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Four Tops, Kool & The Gang, Gerald Albright, Kool Moe Dee and James Brown.
When you think of Pat Boone, one wouldn’t think he was an R&B artist,but it may surprise the untutored that R&B is exactly where Pat Boone started. Music historians and die hard fans of Boone know that it was a young white kid from Nashville (not Memphis) that was "the first" artist of his hue to record an R&B single dubbed for rock and roll in March of 1955.
That single was "Two Hearts," a Top 10 R&B hit by Cincinnati vocal group The Charms. This hit sold over a million copies and peaked at No. 16 on Billboard. In August of the same year, Boone’s version of Fats Domino’s No. 1 R&B hit "Ain’t That A Shame" zoomed to No. 1 in the Pop Charts and No. 14 in the R&B category. His next three singles, also R&B covers, became certified hits with "At My Front Door" hitting #12 R&B, all BEFORE Elvis first recorded his RCA single "Heartbreak Hotel" in February of ’56,verifying once and forever in the annals of music history that Pat Boone was the first white kid to break barriers and cross over into the music genre he loved so much … R&B.
On his new Pat Boone R&B Classics, Boone gets down to funky town having a great time on such cuts as "Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag," with Soul Brother #1 "Jimmy B." Boone delivers a move and groove, head bobbing rendition that makes you want to throw a blue light in the basement and have a real party. This is a side of Pat Boone that his fans who remember his white buck shoes and pop music legacy have rarely seen.
A whole new generation will be able to appreciate the hits on Pat Boone R&B Classics awakening a new market to his massive body of work.
Pat Boone says, "This was a labor of love for music that America has loved for 50 years and a love for the artists who created it; and a love for the unadulterated fun that rocketed around the world."
