theartsdesk at the Porretta Soul Music Festival

Way up in the mountains of northern Italy sits a small spa town called Porretta Terme. For many visitors it is the resort’s healing waters that brings them here. Yet for others it is the healing music – once a year the Porretta Soul Music Festival is held across the second to last weekend in July. Here veterans of American soul music take the stage, often performing their only European show of the year (and, sometimes, many years). I’d heard rumours of Porretta for several years – it has existed since 1988 – and having missed elusive genius Swamp Dogg at last year’s festival meant I went ahead and booked flights and accommodation for Italy.

Porretta, north of Bologna and tucked as it is in leafy woods with a river running through the town, is the perfect idyll for the weary urban dweller. Indeed, as many of the musicians performing come from Memphis, Mississippi and Chicago, places that swelter across summer, I’m imagining they feel blessed to have this break.

The festival takes place in an outdoor amphitheatre that packs in no more than 2,000 soul fans. Porretta Terme is so associated with Southern soul music the town now boasts an Otis Redding St and Rufus Thomas Park (pictured right) – festival founder and artistic director Graziano Uliani being a life-long aficionado of the Memphis groove – and the locals appear to love their festival: high-school brass bands blast out covers of "In the Midnight Hour", while almost every building boasts a poster of a particular festival year. Uliani certainly possesses the magic touch, having brought wayward white soul legend Eddie Hinton over for what would turn out to be his sole European concert, while the likes of William Bell, Percy Wiggins, Sugar Pie DeSanto and Chick Rodgers all performed here in 2011 (without setting foot in the UK).

How much longer Porretta can keep celebrating the old school is debatable: in the last year the world has lost Howard Tate, Etta James, Duck Dunn, Skip Pitts and Andrew Love, two singers and three musicians who helped define what we know as soul music. Needing to look towards younger performers probably explains Friday night’s opening acts: first up were Me & Mrs Winehouse, a Turin-based tribute band who very effectively mimic Amy (Friday was the anniversary of her death and she is huge in Italy), while Robin McKelle & the Flytones (pictured below) found a young white New York band performing standards and originals in a manner not dissimilar to what the Dap Tone label has popularised with the likes of Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Of the two acts I found Mrs Winehouse more effective as vocalist Silvia Zambruno channels Amy’s bluesy voice effectively while McKelle’s attempts at two Etta James standards revealed that, while an energetic performer, she is a pedestrian vocalist.

That night’s headliners were The Bo-Keys, the Memphis-based instrumental outfit who are lead by noted bassist/producer Scott Bomar and feature several veteran players in their ranks: guitarist Skip Pitts was a member until his passing earlier this year, trumpeter Ben Cauley is the sole survivor of Otis Redding’s last flight while drummer Howard “Bulldog” Grimes was producer Willie Mitchell’s primary sticksman (backing the likes of Ann Peebles, Al Green and OV Wright). Tonight The Bo-Keys play superbly, both as an instrumental band and as backing for vocalists John Gary Williams – once of Stax Records vocal group The Mad Lads – and David Hudson, a singer I have never heard of before who performs what can only be described as an absolute vocal masterclass.

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