Leon Ware’s Moon Ride is definitely a suite, written and arranged for you to listen to it in its entirety. Even so, certain sections of his mosaic are more striking than others.

Moon Ride picks up and lays down some classic Motown sounds, subtly yet powerfully sensuous. Ware’s vocal haunts the opening title track with the specter of Marvin Gaye, but you also hear the compositional genius of Smokey Robinson or Stevie Wonder in that incessant hook jangling beneath him. Ware uses some of Gaye’s favorite vocal tricks in “Smoovin’” - ending phrases by dropping in an extra word like “baby” or “darlin’” while slightly lilting his voice upward, for example - to sound like him even more. With a percussion bridge that carries an impeccably sharp string arrangement, “Smoovin’” is a promising single.

But if Stax went with “To Serve You (All My Love)” instead, it’s more than all right with me. It brings James Ingram’s sure, yearning voice into Ware’s brilliant rhythm arrangement and inspiring, irresistible chorus, and intimates the immortality of Quincy Jones’ genius “The Secret Garden” (in which Ingram also appears). It’s warm, passionate and sparkling - it’s simply brilliant.

“Loceans” opens with acoustic guitar dampened by the sound of rain against a window, with Ware’s voice produced to sound as if it is coming from a distance, like from the other side of the glass. Moon Ride is entirely sexy but “Loceans” is much sexier than most. While its rhythm tugs at your mind and hips, its emotions tug at your mind and heart, addressing sensual matters so reverently that feelings of carnality and spirituality melt into one. Deep, deep stuff.

I only caught up to Marvin Gaye well after the fact, in the early 1980s, with him already deep in the frostbitten cocaine paranoia of Midnight Love and his Tamla/Motown glory days seemingly passed. So the first thing I want to write about Leon Ware’s Moon Ride is that this excitement, from listening to this entrancing, hypnotically romantic and sensual hour-long groove, must feel like what it felt like to be digging Marvin as he was happening.

Actually, that’s the second thing. The first thing I want to write is, Wow. Just wow. Moon Ride is the best “comeback album,” especially from someone I previously knew nothing about, that I have ever heard.

Moon Ride is Leon Ware’s first release for the revived Stax Records label, and his first on a major label in two decades. But if you like soul, you’ve heard his music before. Ware wrote “If I Ever Lose This Heaven,” wrote for Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, and wrote and produced Marvin Gaye’s thematic masterpiece I Want You. The influence of Ware’s light, floating vocals (which admittedly sound a lot like Marvin, although in retrospect one wonders how much of this sound was mutual or reciprocal) is pervasive and unmistakable in subsequent soulsters such as D’Angelo and Maxwell.

Ware sings lead and backup vocals, and wrote or co-wrote and produced every tune on Moon Ride. “I’ve never really been out there as a full-fledged recording artist and performer because of my love for producing and writing,” Ware has said. “Now, it’s time to do that.”

As fine as it is, Moon Ride is NOT an immediately easy listen. In fact, the first few times you hear it, you may wonder what the fuss is all about. Give yourself time with Moon Ride. It is a romantic novel, a mosaic made up of countless smaller, interlocking rhythms and phrases both musical and lyrical. Its genius lies in its details and how they’re put together. We’re going to take our time through this Moon Ride, too.

Little Milton, “Behind Closed Doors” (#31 R&B)
From the album Blues & Soul, single released April 1973

In 1973, the soulful, gentlemanly country music singer Charlie “The Silver Fox” Rich scored a #1 country hit with the title track to his album Behind Closed Doors. It was voted the Single of the Year by the Country Music Association, and it coupled with its follow-up, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” to earn Rich the CMA 1973 Entertainer of the Year award.

 In 1974, Little Milton Campbell released his Blues & Soul album, a collection completely consisting of cover versions (including “T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness if I Do”) except for two Milton originals. Milton not only chose to include “Behind Closed Doors” for this set, he picked it as the single for this album.

 ”This song was such a great song,” Milton once explained. “It had such great potential to be delivered the way I felt I could deliver it. Not trying to take anything away from Charlie Rich, but I felt at that time that this song should be introduced to the other side of the track. I just felt it would not get exposed on the blues circuit from Charlie Rich’s version.”

Two things jump out from Little Milton’s version. First, he attacks this tune as a soul/blues singer but not as guitarist; he takes no guitar solo, and limits his playing to sharp, tasty complementary licks to complete each verse he sings. The second is how thoroughly this rearrangement transforms this country tune into an authentic Stax record, pushing the rhythm forward with a little rough and tumble, punching it up with blasts from the Memphis Horns, with strings from the Memphis Symphony as sweetener.

Milton’s hunch about this song proved more or less correct; though it did not enter the Pop charts, it did break into the R&B Top Forty (#34).

Eddie Floyd wrote “‘Till My Back Ain’t Got No Bone,” the opening tune on Eddie Loves You So, although William Bell recorded the first version for Stax, and returns to this tune with a vengeance underscored by its steamy hot, swampy rhythm guitar and a string arrangement that buzzes the mix with an itchy sting. Floyd’s voice has grown mellow without losing much power; he almost sounds like Brook Benton here.

Floyd also co-wrote “You Don’t Know What You Mean to Me” with his “Knock on Wood” songwriting partner, guitarist Steve Cropper. This tune chugs around Cropper’s guitar hook to rock the classic 4/4 Memphis groove, and was first performed by the Stax dynamic duo, Sam & Dave.

Among several effective ballads, “I Will Always Have Faith in You” sounds like an arrangement copped from Willie Mitchell for an Al Green session at “the other Memphis soul label,” Hi Records, even if Floyd’s gentlemanly blues tones somewhat strain toward its highest notes.

Floyd concludes his Eddie Loves You So comeback by revisiting one of his personal favorite Stax originals, “Consider Me,” which he co-wrote with Stax stalwart Booker T. Jones and first recorded for his ‘69 album Rare Stamps. It’s the kind of old-school ballad through which you can revisit the days when life didn’t get much better than a guy holding his girl close to slow dance together, intertwined beneath the moonlight.