Rickie Boger

Rickie Boger is an American soul singer and songwriter who was active in the mid-1970s. Signed to Muse Records and equipped with the label’s formidable jazz/blues session players, she released the album Slow Down, Baby in 1976.

With bass-emphasized fourth notes over a modest Gmaj–Amin progression, “Do You Like My Song?” finds Boger humble yet high-standing, most of all on the Asus2 sustain that rounds off each stanza. Spiraling strings and glimmering Rhodes surround the pace-keeping charts of arranger Howard Johnson. The marquee-brass middle in C/Gmaj7 highlights the brimming catharsis of the lyrics. Not surprisingly, this most self-conscious number is one of only two on the album not penned by the singer.

A whale-leap of strings propels “In a Little While” from low E to ground A as the narrator anticipates the sexual maturation and self-sufficiency of her male offspring. Emphasized third beats are economically filled by the plethora of brass and orchestral talent on hand.

A bare, diatonic ivory descent unravels the stream-of-conscious observations in “At the Clinic” — a labor-stage confessional that jazzes up arrangement-wise as contractions breed anxiety. Though wavering on depressive minor-thirds, the narrator makes a reasoned yet none-too-desperate plea to her straying cohabitant on the album’s title-track.

The muted, flute-wrapped bassline of “We Only Have Love” wiggles upwards to get from Csus2 to G6. Fortunately, the narrator has found happiness this time — a sentiment reflected in the increased velocity and orchestral enlargement that carries this track onward. Earlier on, these feelings were nothing more than a maybe on the rhythmically heady peptune “What Could It Be?”

Elsewhere, “I Won’t See Yesterday” rolls along without regret in sunny Cmaj7. Later, the candlelight keys, fireside strings, and dim-lighted tonal space of “Baby Won’t You Stay” catches our heroine in a more seductive mood.

Boger would never surface again, but her lone album remains one of many treasures from the most halcyon era in recorded music.