On the fliers promoting blues vocalist Sterling Williams' show at the Bryan VFW hall Saturday, potential guests are warned, "This is for the grown-up and sexy folks."
While I'm still not sure exactly what that is supposed to mean, I can take a pretty good guess. A quick listen to Williams' MySpace page (www.myspace.com/sterlingwilliamsblues) reveals songs oozing with '70s blues, funk, R&B and soul.
He excels on songs such as Heartache Medicine, which has a Barry White-esque voice-over backed by an Isaac Hayes-like beat and backup singers repeating, "Ain't no heartache medicine." It would fit perfectly on the soundtrack to a Shaft or Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song sequel.
Others -- such as One On One or his biggest hit to date, My Secret Love -- are more straight-ahead classic R&B.
Williams, 64, considers himself a Los Angeles native, but he grew up in Bryan. Then known as Walter L. Sterling, he attended Kemp High School and sang his first solos at Peaceful Rest Baptist Church.
"I had to get up out of here," he said of leaving the town before graduation. "[I went] from the cotton fields of Bryan to the streets of California."
After his mother died, he didn't have a reason to come back to Bryan, he said. Although he returned last year for a brief release party promoting his latest CD -- Ecko Records' Brand New Man -- last week marked his first extended stay in town since 1968, he said.
"My goal and ambition is to travel and sing and work," he told Spotlight recently, explaining that he spends a lot of time in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. "But I wanted to come home."
He released his first solo record, One Day at a Time, in 1995 and since has recorded two others. The CDs will be on sale Saturday at the show, which begins at 8 p.m.
Admission costs $20.
-- Craig Kapitan
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