Concert Review: Aaron Neville at the Dakota Jazz Club

Singer Aaron Neville

Last night I saw the legendary soul singer Aaron Neville at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. I’ve known who Aaron Neville is for a very long time, but I had never seen him in concert before. Neville performed with his pianist Michael Goods, and together they kept the audience at the Dakota spellbound for 90 minutes. 

Neville is known for his distinctive high voice, and it stills sounds pretty darn good at age 78. There’s no mistaking Aaron Neville’s voice for anyone else’s. Although Neville was seated behind a keyboard for the entire show, he only played a few opening chords to some songs. To his left was a music stand with a huge notebook filled with lyrics. Neville didn’t share that many stories during the concert, which surprised me. He’s certainly had a lengthy career in the music business. 

Neville opened the show with a medley of songs from the 1950’s and 1960’s: Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me,” Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” and “Chain Gang,” and the Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby.” Neville sang his big hits, “Don’t Know Much,” his hit duet with Linda Ronstadt, and “Tell It Like It Is,” with the former appearing early in the set, and the latter being one of the last songs of the evening. In between, Neville sang a mixture of songs, most of which were familiar to me, and most dating from the 1950’s and 1960’s. Some highlights were “Pledging My Love,” first sung by Johnny Ace and later covered by Elvis Presley, and Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire.” Neville sang two songs made famous by Nat King Cole, “Mona Lisa,” and “When I Fall in Love.” For those two songs, Goods switched to an electric keyboard, rather than the acoustic piano, and to me the keyboard ended up sounding like a cheap synthesizer. 

I was secretly hoping that Neville would play some songs by the great New Orleans songwriter Allen Toussaint, but that didn’t happen. Neville gave us lovely versions of Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are,” and James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” Neville is an outstanding ballad singer, and it was fun to see such a legendary singer in such a small venue.