Joe McBride

I first heard this song playing constantly in some test transmissions of a local radio station several years ago. Catchy tune throughout. However, I was unable to place a title to it because it was never announced. Frustrated in this sense, I recorded a short portion of the song and uploaded it to the watzatsong website in the hope that someone would be able to identify it.

After 855 days and some false leads, someone finally identified the tune and pointed me to a YouTube clip which featured Joe McBride playing Keepin' It Real. There's no entry about him in Wikipedia but his own website described him as having been born and raised in Fulton, Missouri. He started playing the piano at four years old, and his earliest influences were gospel music, bebop, straight-ahead jazz, Motown, and ’70s R&B and funk. In his teens, he began singing and playing at jazz clubs. But also around this time, he was stricken with a degenerative eye disease that eventually claimed his sight. But his passion for music didn’t diminish and, taking inspiration from Ray Charles, another blind musician, McBride continued his musical studies at the Missouri School for the Blind and Webster University in suburban St. Louis, where he majored in jazz performance. He also attended the University of North Texas.

His website says that McBride has nine compact disc albums to his credit and Spotify lists six of them, including Keepin' It Real, from which this song was taken.