Though generally overlooked in polls of top soft-rock songwriters, the former Bread frontman David Gates merits a place up there with Bacharach and the Bee Gees.
It is a gross injustice that he is remembered as a schlocky middle-of-the-road balladeer. If the Carpenters can be rehabilitated as the essence of lounge-chic, Gates's mastery of melody and understated lyricism are positively begging for rediscovery. His hits from the 1970s, If and Everything I Own, even survived incursions by Telly Savalas and Boy George.
Now semi-retired, the Oklahoma-born singer, whose moustache is more Marlboro Man than Freddie Mercury, seems ambivalent about the matter. Not having been near a stage in six years, he was persuaded to tour only when a 2002 anthology sold 100,000 copies.
Gates is markedly itchy about swapping his California cattle ranch for a still-faithful public. Between songs, he rushes through corny jokes, worries that the songs are in too high a key for his 63-year-old throat and, at 9.30pm, apologises for "keeping you up all night".
But when he sings, he is utterly commanding. Backed by a string section and two guitarists but no percussion, his spring-water voice is the purest of instruments. If he has trouble cresting the top notes, notably on the syntactically challenged Baby I'm-a Want You, it just confers poignancy. Make It With You and If, both written for his wife of 43 years, embody in the subtle string arrangements the sweetness of a first kiss.
The cowboy hat, Tulsa twang and homespun homilies, which would usually reduce a British audience to pitying giggles, feel more like constancy and maturity. Gates deals with big themes, such as the death of his father as recounted on Everything I Own, with simple sincerity. His one indulgence is the classical-lite Cloud Suite, reinforcing the old adage that "suite" is only permissible in hotels, preceded by "presidential".
It is apt that this moving set features an instrumental version of Over the Rainbow, the classic tale of recognising that what you are looking for has been there all along. If Gates had a motto, that might be it.
