Consumer Guide Album

Richard "Dimples" Fields: Mr. Look So Good [Boardwalk, 1982]
Aware that Fields brought something quite his own to the soul/r&b heritage, I wondered why his buttery come-on never moved me. Reason's simple--he's as egoistic and ultimately lightweight as James Taylor, another traditionalist original. Dissecting women with a butcher's eye one minute and quoting Biblical prophecy the next, he persuades me of neither his essential goodness nor his essential badness. I've got nothing against the combination, either--just ask Marvin Gaye, who works at least as hard at it as Fields, or Al Green, who doesn't. B−