Billy Soul Bonds

But it wasn’t until he joined Malaco/Waldoxy and released Scat Cat, Here Kitty, Kitty on the 2006 Here Kitty, Kitty CD that he became a household name. That song, with its playful sexual innuendo laid over an ironically romantic ballad backing, became the year’s biggest soul blues hit, and in the process it sparked a virtual cottage industry of songs about men’s “dogs” satisfying, craving, subduing or otherwise impressing themselves on women’s “cats.” But Bonds is no one-theme wonder: his funk-toughened love ballads (It Took Someone Like You, Wedding Song, She’s the Woman I Love [This is It]) are both danceable and romantic in the great slow jam tradition, and in performance he continues to show himself as a versatile entertainer in command of an emotional palette that’s both wide and deep.

—David Whiteis