If Eli Paperboy Reed has one mission in life it is to re-introduce soul music to a younger audience.
“Wilson Pickett was 19 years old when he started recording,” he tells Undercover.fm. “I think that is something that people sometimes lose sight of. Soul music is a young peoples music”.
When you hear Eli Paperboy Reed for the first time you can be forgiven for thinking he is a old, black guy from the 60s but he is a young white guy from Boston. “I think the misconception that a lot of people have is that this music is for old people or made by old people but soul music in the 1960s was all about young people. It was all about exciting and energetic fun and hard-driving music. That’s what music should be about.,” he says.
He is now doing for America what Amy Winehouse did for the UK, bring back soul music to a younger audience. “When the Amy Winehouse record hit that was the beginning for the UK. It kind of caught up a little bit in America as things went on,” he says. “I feel like that is a good thing to be able to do”.
VIDEO: Watch the Eli Paperboy Reed interview at Undercover and stick around to the end when he performs the title track from his ‘Come and Get It’ album:
