It has been a while since hard-core soul, preceded ever since by the adjective "classic," has played on mainstream radio or juke box. Johnny Rawls, not a young man, continues to sing it, though, and in the process reminds us of that genre's singular charms.

It's a style that specializes overwhelmingly in undiluted romantic feeling, happy and unhappy, and it depends on voice, delivery, female back-up chorus, and band. Rawls has all of them, along with an underlying grounding in the blues. A solid horn section is nearly always part of the bargain. Few soul or soul-blues artists step outside the formula. What matters is what they do within the guardrails.

I've reviewed a number of Rawls's releases (most recently in this space on 28 October 2023), each time with increased difficulty as I seek something fresh to say. Veteran performers like Rawls, especially those who were commanding talents from the outset, become almost un-reviewable over time. They know exactly what they want to do, and they know exactly how to do it. One holds a Rawls album in one's hand (if one still listens, as I do, in the old-fashioned way) and knows that solid music is soon going to be passing through. One also has the feeling that one is listening to an extended recording that only improves the farther one gets into it.

It helps that Rawls is signed to a label that knows what it's doing. Bob Trenchard runs Catfood Records out of the blues-unlikely Lincoln, Nebraska. (Its previous base, El Paso, Texas, isn't exactly a blues haven either.) Trenchard plays bass in the exquisite house band, known as the Rays, and often writes or co-writes with his artists. On Make Them Dance the sole number by an outsider is "Move in My Direction," composed by the estimable Sandy Carroll.

Rawls alone composed "Costs Too Much," about how at a certain point in one's life that's what makes romance, never easy, a particularly forbidding challenge even for one who works "hard for my money." This blunt testimony is slathered in horns as if Rawls were relating, as so much soul-blues does, some joyous, erotic fairytale. Instead, he supplies a dose of recognizable, lived reality. If you're not rich, he's saying, even one's wish for the most elemental happiness can be beyond one's means. The song stands out because soul music is meant in good part to help one forget how limited one's choices really are. Unexpectedly but movingly, Rawls elects to remind us.

The two concluding numbers, both credited to Rawls and Trenchard, also step outside the formula. "Swimming with the Sharks" -- which tells its story elliptically, I think -- may be the soul equivalent of a murder ballad. In "The Long Road" Rawls looks back on his extended career and forward to its approaching end. He sings it beautifully in sorrow and celebration.

Like so many criminally unrecognized masters in this and other genres, we hear him and wonder why he isn't famous. Luckily for all who have been blessed to intersect with his music, however, he has plowed on with what he is here to do: contribute a close-to-perfect art to an imperfect world.