Introducing Ricky Fante: young man, old soul

Real soul music, as vital as your next heartbeat, has a mess of livin' in it.

It cannot be taught, it must be lived. That's what separates great from good, passionate tribulation from proficient technique. It's less a sound than a marrow-deep feeling, a salve for the wounds of faded love or an exhilarating shout when you've got the world on a string. Whether it's Otis Redding's stutter at the end of "Try a Little Tenderness" or the steam of Wilson Pickett's scream in "Mustang Sally," it's an indescribable thrill, both foreign and familiar, that arches the back and makes you move in a way you didn't know possible.

Ricky Fante -- a former Marine and a soldier of love -- is proud to call himself a soul singer, a distinction, he believes, that should not be lightly bestowed.

"I've been through some things," Fante says during a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home. "I've been through a lot of relationships, I've been through a lot. What you hear in my music is everything I've experienced and lived."

Raw and moving, Fante's debut album, "Rewind," hits stores Tuesday. His remarkably seasoned voice will instantly remind listeners -- especially those over 35 -- of such soul greats as Redding, Sam Cooke, and Al Green. It's a retro sound from the '60s and '70s, which is again refreshing, especially when compared to the formulaic and textureless modern R&B of, say, Usher. It also stands apart from the neo-soul of D'Angelo, which has always had a hip-hop sensibility present in its attitude, if not its execution.

Through its 12 tracks, "Rewind" plays as if hip-hop never happened -- and that's just fine with Fante. "That's not what I'm trying to do," says the 26-year-old singer-songwriter. "I want to take people on a roller coaster ride of emotions with classic soul as the backdrop."

And it is an amazing ride. From the piano and horn-driven opening track, "I Let You Go," with a sound so evocative of years past it could have been plucked from your parents' dusty stack of 45s, to the heartbreaking and lush "Why," Fante delivers his music with a palpable ache designed to gnaw at you long after the song is over. Fante recorded his debut as a tribute to the honey-dipped heyday of the Memphis-based Stax sound, "a time I consider the mecca of soul music," he said.

Though his song "It Ain't Easy" features a portion of Pickett's "It Ain't Easy," Fante co-wrote every song on the album. Whereas Joss Stone, the 16-year-old British wunderkind with the old soul sound, recorded all cover songs for her 2003 debut, "The Soul Sessions," Fante and his cocreators believed original songs would best reflect his vintage soul vision.

"Ricky's a songwriter, and he has things to say," says Josh Deutsch, senior vice president for A&R at Virgin Records, Fante's label. "For me, the issue was configuring the right group of people around him to help him express that. To me, personally, cover albums aren't as meaningful as when you can find someone who can actually write songs, or with the help of a group of people. come up with his own material."

Deutsch, who also produced "Rewind," discovered Fante when he received a demo of the Soul Surfers, an acoustic soul duo Fante formed several years ago. He contacted the young singer, flew him to New York, and introduced him to Jesse Harris, the musician and songwriter first recognized for his Grammy-winning work on Norah Jones's multimillion-selling 2002 debut, "Come Away With Me." Harris and Deutsch are longtime friends.

"We instantly got along with each other -- he laughed at my jokes," Fante quips. "I find the guy extremely talented, and once we were introduced, we got along with each other in a working environment."

With Deutsch, Harris, and keyboardist Guyora Kats, Fante wrote, recorded, and completed the album in six months before he even had a record deal.

"We weren't trying to make a throwback record," Deutsch says. "That's just what Ricky's voice wants to do. We also wanted to take a step back from all the traffic in the neo-soul world, and we wanted to make a record that was a little more emotional and innocent."

And authentic. In this album's liner notes, the great Isaac Hayes, who first made his name playing keyboards for Redding and who co-wrote such songs as "Soul Man" and "Hold On, I'm Comin," calls Fante "the shot of adrenaline the music industry needs today." Deepening his old-soul credentials, Fante also appeared earlier this year as Pickett singing the classic "Land of a Thousand Dances" on an episode of NBC's set-in-the-1960s drama "American Dreams."

Born and raised in a middle-class Washington, D.C., family, Fante was always immersed in music. His grandmother sang in the church choir, so singing was "just natural," he says.

"I listened to a lot of music growing up, and I just absorbed what I heard like a sponge. My parents played all types of music," Fante recalls. "There was always gospel on Sunday. My mom likes everything from Barry Manilow to Parliament, and all the things in between. And my father listens to a lot of jazz and soul."

Still, the big-bang moment of Fante's young life was hearing Stevie Wonder. In the early 1980s, his mother and aunt took the 5-year-old to a rally in support of making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday. Wonder sang, among other songs, his King-inspired anthem "Happy Birthday," and from that moment, he had Fante in his thrall.

"I'd never heard anyone like that," Fante says. "He moved me to tears, and after that I just wanted to hear everything Stevie Wonder did. He's the artist I admire the most." (Fante takes a moment to clear up early reports that had him citing Elvis Presley as a major musical influence: "I liked Elvis's style. I liked his persona of coolness, but that's basically it when it comes to Elvis.")

Later, Fante got into go-go music, the bass-heavy, beat-crazy music best recognized outside its D.C. birthplace through the 1987 hit "Da' Butt" by E.U., and he started his first group, Junior Division. Any musical ambitions were put on the sidelines when Fante enlisted in the US Marine Corps after high school. When he completed his four-year hitch, he moved to Los Angeles and began performing in local clubs while attending college and working various jobs.

Those years are thankfully over, and Fante credits his father for teaching him the discipline to stick with his dreams, even during the lean years. Now he's making music full time and is already plotting his next album, which, he says, will feature a go-go beat -- "I want to do something we haven't heard before, while still keeping it soulful."

While others sprout cliches about "keepin' it real," with Fante it always comes back to keeping it soulful.

"There's a lot of young kids out there who don't know what soul music is all about," Fante says. "I want people to hear that R&B can be done in a tasteful manner without lyrics about smacking a girl on her booty, or having one cup filled with Hennessy and another filled with diamonds and pearls."

Renee Graham can be reached at graham@globe.com.