There’s been such a flurry of reissued “lost albums” over the years, any of them deserving their obscurity, that it’s easy to dismiss the next one to cross the desk. Who You Been Talking To, however, is worth paying attention to – the kind of record crate diggers dream about.
After singing in teenage doo-wop groups and being mentored by Aaron Neville and his brother Charles, Brooklyn songwriter and vocalist David Forman made a self-titled critical darling released on Arista in 1976 and roundly ignored, its deft blend of doo-wop flavored R&B and poetic seventies songwriting too far ahead of its time. When he made his second LP in 1977 with producer Jack Nitszche, Forman felt he had something that took him to the next artistic plateau. But Arista boss Clive Davis declined to release the album, though he gave Forman the masters free of charge. Disheartened, Forman put the reels on the shelf and went on to a less fulfilling, but more lucrative, career in jingles and commercial music.
Nearly five decades later, Who You Been Talking To finally makes its entrance into the world. After one listen to the title track, a silky ball of blue-eyed falsetto soul, quirky bruised romanticism, and understated pop melody, we have to wonder what ol’ Clive was thinking all those years ago. The track’s deep feeling and satin appeal would’ve sounded great on AM radio in the seventies, and sound just as fine today. Even better, the tune opens the door to several more that are just as good, from the soulful noir rock of “Thirty Dollars” and the pained heartbreak of “Let It Go Now” to the cheeky Latin pop of “Midnight Mambo,” the dramatic fantasy of “Little Asia,” and the romantic resignation of “Painted in a Corner” and “We Talk Too Much.” Backed by the kind of session team for which more well-known artists would have killed, including guitarists Ry Cooder, David Lindley, and Fred Tackett, bassist Tim Drummond, drummer Jim Keltner, saxophonist Steve Douglas, accordionist Flaco Jimenez, and Nitzsche himself on electric piano, Forman more than holds his own, infusing every song with that Big Apple flavor that comes from hanging out on the streets, and just generally singing the shit out of everything.
There’s not a dud on this record, nor is there anything that wouldn’t have appealed to fans of, say, Mink DeVille (who covered this album’s “A Train Lady” on their second album Return to Magenta). Maybe Forman emerged at the wrong time – Bobby Caldwell would hit just a year later with the far slicker soul/pop of “What You Won’t Do For Love,” and Laura Nyro had scored hits a few years earlier with a distinctive fusion of introspection and R&B. Forman’s amalgam of Smokey Robinson soul and Paul Simon poetics sounds contemporary in these days of Ed Sheeran, Nathaniel Rateliff, and Mayer Hawthorne. As keenly balanced between heart and craft as anyone might hope, Who You Been Talking To truly is one of those great lost albums, now – fortunately – found.
