The Porretta Soul Festival in Porretta Terme, Italy, one of the world’s most unlikely celebrations of soul music — and of Memphis soul music in particular — kicked off last Thursday night in Rufus Thomas Park. Since 1988, when founder Graziano Uliani staged the festival’s first show, the gathering has drawn steadily larger crowds. Now the town, recognized since Roman times for its hot springs (the “Terme” in its name), is arguably best known for the soul music it showcases every summer.
Indeed, the area surrounding Porretta has been unofficially dubbed “The Valley of Soul.” At the town’s center, Solomon Burke Bridge stretches over the Reno River, while Otis Redding Street winds through the small town’s homes and shops. And the newly established Soul Museum documents the festival’s history, especially the serendipity that connected Uliani, a soul music fan since his teens, with the Memphis Horns (Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love) back in the ’80s. Soul music, he says, “was only my hobby, my passion.” He worked in advertising at the time, but knew how to make things happen.
“An Italian soul singer named Zucchero — ‘Sugar’ — wanted to record an R&B album in Italian,” Uliani recalls. “I suggested he use the Memphis Horns, so they came in February ’87 and recorded with Zucchero, and the album sold 1,000,500 copies. Later, Zucchero went to Memphis with me, and we recorded at Ardent Studios an album, Oro Incenso & Birra. ‘Gold, Incense, and Beer.’ And the album has sold 8 million. We recorded it with Rufus Thomas, a gospel choir, J. Blackfoot, William Brown, and many other soul singers who had performed at Stax.”
The Zucchero connection led to Rufus Thomas and the Memphis Horns headlining the first “Sweet Soul Music” festival in Porretta, as it was known at the time. Since then, the festival has often featured Memphis or Mid-South artists, such as Carla, Vaneese, and Marvell Thomas, Sam Moore, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the MGs, and many others.
Last year, after Memphis and Porretta Terme declared themselves “sister cities,” Mayor Paul Young and Mayor Lee Harris attended the festival. This year, Linn Sitler, the city’s longstanding film commissioner, attended with a small cohort of other Memphians, and, due in part to her pivotal role in the sister city agreement, was recognized as an honorary citizen of Porretta Terme by the town’s mayor, Giusseppe Nanni. Now growing beyond music, the sister cities are planning collaborations in both cinema and basketball (as the sanctuary of “Beata Vergine Madonna del Ponte,” the patron saint of the sport, is located in Porretta).
This year’s festival, which concluded Sunday night, offered a cornucopia of Memphis sounds mingled with European artists who favor the same genres. The Özdemirs, from Germany, played the first set, led by singer/guitarist Kenan Özdemir presenting as a very bluesy Kenny Loggins. They also backed the haunting U.S. bluesman Tad Robinson and were followed by Bay Area boogie woogie piano phenom Mitch Woods, supported by the Bononia Sound Machine.
Then it was time for the Mid-South to take the stage, as Sandy Carroll fronted the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (MMHOF) band, led by Kurt “KC” Clayton. While Carroll may have been more familiar to Memphians as a sultry-voiced solo pianist on Beale Street back in the ’80s, she positively flourished on Thursday with the large ensemble enhancing her blues, gospel, and pop-inflected originals.
That was the crowd’s first taste of the superlative combo, which has backed stars from every genre while performing at induction ceremonies since MMHOF’s founding in 2012. Having served as the festival’s house band of sorts for three years now, they backed nearly all the Americans on the 2026 bill.
Led by Kurt “KC” Clayton, who once played with the SRO band and then Come in Berlin before becoming the musical director first for the Bar-Kays, then for Con Funk Shun, the crack team is perhaps the best-rehearsed and most versatile band in Memphis today. With a core group of two keyboardists, two guitarists, bass, drums, and three horns, they can recreate any recording from the history of soul, funk, and the blues, and that power’s only multiplied by the group’s three vocalists (whose faces graced the festival’s official poster), Shunta Mosby, Dani McGhee, and Candy Fox, aka The Jewels, who can blend classic harmony arrangements à la the Sweet Inspirations or step out as solo singers when the songs demand it.
When each of The Jewels took the spotlight during the MMHOF band’s mix of classic soul covers and originals, the audience was ecstatic, as they were when Memphis singer Dot Moore stepped up to the mic, belting out Carla Thomas’ “Sugar” and other gems. The band could also pivot to down-home blues, as with sublime Arkansas belter Karen Wolfe.
Other notable acts who performed with their own ensembles included Thornetta Davis & the ZBlues Band, Curtis Salgado & Soul Shot, and John Ellison & the Carpenter Ants. Meanwhile, impervious to fatigue, the MMHOF band elevated the crowd of well over 2,000 to new heights each night, hosting star turns by Lenny Williams, the former singer for Tower of Power who evoked both his old hits and the likes of Curtis Mayfield with suave aplomb; and Big Robb of Cincinnati, who channeled both Rufus Thomas (in shorts and glitter suits) and his own mentor, Zapp’s Roger Troutman, all to a frenzied audience response.
Rufus Thomas was omnipresent. Jerry Phillips, who has been enjoying a higher profile lately with his 2024 album, For the Universe, and as the first subject of Memphis Record Pressing’s Legends film series, received the festival’s Sweet Soul Music award Friday night, and Thomas was foremost on his mind. “My dad’s first hit record on Sun Records was Rufus Thomas’ ‘Bear Cat,’ so it’s a real honor for me to accept this award in a park named after Rufus,” said Phillips, adding, “I’ve been to a lot of festivals before, but I’ve never seen enthusiasm like I see here with you people.”
Guitar virtuoso Eric Gales, who mostly remained seated onstage due to injuries from a recent car accident, nonetheless delivered emotional, incendiary sets on both Saturday and Sunday, backed by the MMHOF band, with highlights including “Too Close to the Fire,” a song calling out racism, and his sublime, Jeff Beck-inspired cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.” Most of all, he was channeling memories of his late brother, who once played Porretta. “I feel the same energy that I believe my brother had here over 25 years ago,” Gales announced. “Will y’all please give it up for my big brother, Little Jimmy King?” Yet there was much joy present as well when he called his wife LaDonna to the stage and announced that “at the strike of midnight, me and her will have been married 14 years.” Amid the roaring applause, Gales launched into a version of “Purple Rain” so impassioned, so searing, that the concrete amphitheater in Rufus Thomas Park seemed to levitate a few meters.
This reporting was made possible through the generous support of Memphis Record Pressing and the Porretta Soul Festival.
