During the mid to late 70's Robert Palmer was far from the household name he became during the mid 80's. At the same time at this point in the 70's one of the more fasionable things for a lot of white rock musicians was to record in the Crescent City with many of the local musicians from Dr. John,Allen Toussaint,Little Feat and The Meters. None of these projects were bad at all but strangly enough many of them were one or two off genre excersises that the said artist(s) never again returned to. This was not one of those efforts. Throughout even the 80's the core of Robert Palmers music was always soul and funk so it was only fitting he would make his first solo album in New Orleans with of course all the best people in town on board. Two of the most remarkable things about this are related to Palmer himself. He wrote or co-wrote almost all the music on this album and had a very keen understanding of how to create great funk music,from the honeyed nuances (as opposed to loud bellowing) of his vocal style. Now he does a great job for sure in interpreting Big Easy styled funk here from the rolling clavinets on Allen Toussaint's title track and "From A Whisper To A Scream" which Palmer also delivers with his great soulful understatement. There's more of an obvious Mardi Gras-style hump to the grooves of Lowell George's "Sailin' Shoes" and "Blackmail" but some of the most impressive songs on the album are the ones Palmer wrote himself. "Hey Julia" is an excellent song-a great rhythm box percussion led have jive/funk sort of groove with a really deep Carribean rhythm under the service;not so obvious it's emmediately detectable but it's there if you recognize it. "Get Close" and "How Much Fun" both illustrate an understanding of the elegance of funk and elegance is a quality that Palmer himself always possessed very strong. Of course for a SERIOUS represenation of that there's the twelve minute closer "Through It All There's You" where Palmer really works a hardcore jam to death with his wonderfully jazzily phrased licks and how the song builds up and down from a full band sound back to it's lower key tones from the beginning. It was only fitting that his 70's sound was built very strongly on the type of music presented on this album and it's a credit to his integrity that maintained a strong connection to this particular element of his sound throughout his career as opposed to totally disgarding them when they were no longer trendy in mass culture.