A native of New Orleans, Aaron Neville is probably best known for his work as part of The Neville Brothers throughout the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, during which time they amassed a great reputation for their authentic and versatile recordings. Aaron’s beautiful high tenor was always a highlight and one of – if not the – group’s strongest weapon. Up until the ‘90s, Neville had only released two solo albums as he was always loyal to his band of brothers, but he found major success when he ventured out on his own to guest on other artists’ recordings, singing duets and recording songs for movie soundtracks.
Two of these duets (“Don’t Know Much” and “All My Life”) he recorded with Linda Ronstadt for her 1989 solo LP, Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind, which saw the pair win a Grammy for their wonderful performance on “Don’t Know Much.” Neville also scored world-wide chart success with his 1991 version of The Main Ingredient’s ‘Everybody Plays The Fool.” In recent years, Neville has kept busy recording everything from gospel albums to Christmas albums, as well as the obligatory standards album (seriously, who hasn’t recorded one of these at one time or another?). 
January 2013 saw Neville relies one of his longest held dreams, as he finally delivered a full-length covers albums full of his favorite doo-wop songs. Don Was and Keith Richards produced My True Story, and both played and sang backup on the record to great effect. Heartbreaker Benmont Tench was on board from the get-go and eventually rallied his troops, including Tom Petty, to lend a hand as well. Neville’s brother Art also played on one of the tracks and the rest of the recording duties were handled with delicate care by some of the best session guys around. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, these projects live and die by the song selection process and how those selected tracks work for the artist(s) recording them.
In that regard, My True Story is a winner because Neville had been singing some of these songs for years on the road and to himself throughout his career. I’m just not sure that his restrained, almost too careful vocals work for all of these songs, and sometimes I think maybe a more vigorous approach would have been more effective and offered some variance among the twelve tracks. Anyway, that’s not a major gripe because for the most part everything here works just fine and Neville’s golden voice still belies his seventy-two years, which is quite remarkable in itself. One of the strongest tracks here is the opener “Money Honey,” on which we get some great doo-wop vocals and a fantastic guitar solo.
The most ambitious song on the record is a slow and tender reading of The Ronettes’ mammoth number one single “Be My Baby,” which in my opinion was the best song Phil Spector ever produced. Richards offers some great backing vocals and Neville does his best to get into the heart of the song, but I’m still not sure that it works as well as it should have. “Tears On My Pillow” and “Under The Boardwalk” work really well and are among the album’s finest moments, as is a wonderful reading from Neville on “Ting A Ling;” his voice really shines on that one. My favorite song here, though, is the album’s closer, which is just a perfect rendition of “Goodnight My Love (Pleasant Dreams),” a great way to close out the album.
I’d like to mark this one higher than I have because the playing and production is so beautifully managed, but for some reason I just don’t think I have got as much out of it as I expected. That’s not to take away from the fact that My True Story is clearly a very good record and one of Neville’s finest moments from his brilliant career.