Victim of the Joke?: An Opera

Personnel includes: David Porter, Roni LeBeau, Jeanette Parrish, Ronnie Williams, Calvin Porter, Henry Bush, Ron Capone, Larry Nix, Bobby Manuel, Buddy Davis, Harold Beane, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Leon Hodges, Willie Hall, Al Jackson, Jr., The Bar-Kays, The Memphis Horns, The Memphis Symphony.
Recorded in 1971.
Victim of the Joke?: An Opera is a concept album of sorts, the songs linked together by dialogue based around a thin romantic plot. The tunes (including both originals and surprising covers of the Beatles' "Help!" and the Tin Pan Alley tune "The Masquerade Is Over") are OK, but not special, treading closer to pop-soul than the grittier tone of many of David Porter's '60s compositions with Isaac Hayes. Porter's voice, again, is OK but unremarkable. While the construction of the LP was a laudably ambitious outing by early-'70s soul standards, the results weren't all that interesting; indeed, the thematic "concept" (of a typically rocky love affair) that drives the album is pretty simple and innocuous. ~ Richie Unterberger