Piano player and singer Kevin Gullage has a vast resume for a 23-year-old, which may explain why his first full-length album appears on the New Orleans-based Grammy Award-winning label Basin Street Records. He is already known nationally for his appearance on American Idol; at 18 he was the pianist for the Thelonious Monk All-Star Sextet and his voice was featured in the recent reboot of Disney’s Lady and The Tramp.

From the first notes of his album with his band, the Blues Groovers, listeners can hear the soul in his voice. It certainly helps that the opening song is the R&B standard “Shaky Ground,” which was first recorded by The Temptations. He gives ample room for his band to shine—the first sounds you hear are a syncopated high hat and a funky guitar lick. Eddie Hazel, the Funkadelic guitarist who cowrote the song, is smiling somewhere.

The rest of the album is a showcase for that voice and his stellar piano work, which was honed at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in high school followed by Loyola University. “Grits and Groceries,” a cut much loved by New Orleans music fans, showcases the stop-on-a-dime skills of the Blues Groovers with a horn chart right out of the heyday of 1950s R&B. Gullage shouts the blues with the best of them.

“Movin’ On,” one of three original cuts on the album, is a low-down blues belying Gullage’s youth. A slinky guitar, courtesy of special guest Chicago soul man Ronnie Baker Brooks, twerks behind wide-open piano chords as Gullage sings a kiss-off to a wayward lover. Wait until the old school R&B deejays get a hold of this tune.

Keep an eye out for Kevin & the Blues Groovers. The production on the album is fine and the musicians are tight, but it’s that voice that will stand the test of time.