Final night at Porretta

Porretta returned to tradition by featuring a review of many of the acts of the previous two evenings on the last night of the festival. Once again Toni Green stole the show, with another fantastic deep soul performance including a passion drenched version of Aretha's Dr Feelgood, complete with James Brown style draping of her shawl around her shoulders as she knelt on the stage sobbing at the end. Absolutely breathtaking.

Betty Harris kicked off the show and this time ended her set with an exquisitely soulful rendition of Cry to Me. Ellis Hooks seemed to try too hard to be exciting and ended up being rather frantic and one paced. Sir Mack Rice (middle picture) showed once more why he is better known as a song writer than a singer and Jimmy McCracklin (pictured top) was in good form again, as were his back up singers Sweet Nectar. The Austin DeLone band again showed just how good they are and the irrepressible Sugar Pie DeSanto (pictured below) rounded the evening off in good style, even if that honour should really have gone to Toni. Altogether another great evening.

And so to Monday and the return home. Thank you British Airways for keeping me waiting five hours at Bologna Airport. I eventually made it to bed at 2.30am.