DR. FEELGOOD POTTS

Dr. "Feelgood" Potts
Daddy B. Nice's #72 ranked Southern Soul Artist
Daddy B. Nice's Original Critique:

Dr. "Feelgood" Potts is the father of famed chitlin' circuit singer Sheba Potts-Wright, whose career has eclipsed her daddy's with the success of such hits as "Slow Roll It" and "Lipstick On His Pants."

But through it all Sheba has remained loyal to her father, singing stellar back-up on his best recordings.

That extra dimension has enriched Dr. "Feelgood's" music but by no means been the governing factor in its success. Potts is a seasoned musician and performer, and an engrossing character for Southern Soul fans because of his relative obscurity (even within the chitlin' circuit) until signing with Memphis' Ecko Records in the early years of the new century. It's then that his artistic identity began to emerge.

Dr. "Feelgood" Potts plies the bluesman-as-jokester tradition of Bobby Rush, Clarence Carter (the "Strokin'" phase) and chitlin' circuit legend Poonanny, and the song most responsible for Potts' growing notoriety is undoubtedly 2004's "Make It Talk," a well-executed and hilarious rip-off of Theodis Ealey's monster hit, "Stand Up In It." "Rip-off" is not a derogatory word in this instance, but an aesthetic description of the ferocity with which Potts rewrites Ealey's contemporary classic.


Potts is best doing what he does here, mimicking speech. It's as if he begins each phrase as a monologue and then delivers a singing "spin" to it. The result is a pleasant and soulful authenticity.