[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK9cs23Osn0[/youtube]

One of New Orleans’ great voices, the falsetto king Aaron Neville, plays at House of Blues tonight. Neville has been singing professionally for over half-a-century now, recording his first single “Over You” in 1960 and scoring his first hit, “Tell It Like It Is” in 1966. After putting his solo career on hold to concentrate on singing with his siblings in the Neville Brothers, Aaron’s name returned to the marquee in the early 1990s. Recording for A&M Records, the albums he recorded during that period became the best-selling of his career.

In 1995, he released this music video for his cover of Bill Withers’ classic “Use Me,” on which his brother Cyril sings backup and Charles plays sax. The song was the third single from The Tattooed Heart, and cracked the R&B Top 100 chart. In former editor Keith Spera’s album review at the time, he mentioned that Aaron had “spoken of doing an album of all spiritual material, or maybe one of vintage doo-wop.” 15 years later, Aaron released I Know I’ve Been Changed in 2010, an album of stripped-down gospel songs produced by Allen Toussaint and Joe Henry. Now there’s news of Neville in the studio working on a record of golden-era doo-wop with Keith Richards and Blue Note Records President Don Was producing. The tracks will be made up songs picked by Neville himself, with Richards and a group of crack studio veterans making up the band. The album’s release is planned for the fall.

Bonus Beats: For more on Aaron Neville, see our interviews with the legend from 1993 (with Keith Spera), 2003 (with Bunny Matthews), and 2006 (with Alex Rawls).