Monday, 11 October 2010
Archbishop of the United House of Prayer For All People, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur and mortician (21 March 1940 – 10 October 2010) known as the King of Rock 'n' Soul and the Bishop of Soul and described as the most unfairly overlooked singer of soul's golden age.
There are big men, and then again there are BIG men, and I don't recall seeing too many bigger than the late great Solomon Burke. To the average bloke in the street that's probably a case of Solomon Who? but where Hughesy's concerned, while I was never a huge fan, Solomon Burke, the King of Rock and Soul will always be the only singer able to sing like that seated on a throne.
In my (admittedly limited) understanding of these things, powerful singers get that tone from the diaphragm, and as I sit tapping out this R.I.P. I find it hard to imagine how anyone could produce the soulful roar emitted by Mr Burke on the Live at North Sea Jazz 2003 DVD, which is where I realised just how big this man was, while sitting down.
It must all be in the posture.
There's some indication of his size in the scene from The Big Easy where New Orleans police lieutenant Remy McSwain (Dennis Quaid) calls on ghetto mobster Daddy Mention, played by Burke, but you need to catch that DVD or some YouTube footage to appreciate how remarkable the man was.
We frequently make comments like when they made him they broke the mould, but it's hard to imagine many more charismatic and idiosyncratic performers than Solomon Burke. He wasn't one to stick within boundaries, and had a string of entrepreneurial activities that would have matched his family of family of twenty-one children, ninety grandchildren and nineteen great-grandchildren. Mind you, with that many kids he probably needed to. In a diverse business career, Burke operated food concessions, a church ministry, a pharmacy and a mortuary business in Los Angeles (he'd had worked in his uncle's funeral parlour). There's a marvellous anecdote on page 86 of Gerri Hirshey's Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music. Jerry Wexler, reminiscing about a Burke recording session while there was a blizzard outside recalls Burke leaving without hearing the playback because he was running a dump truck to pick up snow, an operation that paid four dollars an hour!
That comes straight before another story where Atlantic Records boss gets a phone call from the management of Harlem's Apollo Theatre complaining because Solomon was selling popcorn in the aisles between performances. When told that the theatre had concessionary arrangements that covered popcorn, potato chips and soft drinks, Burke established the fact that there were no arrangements covering grilled pork chop sandwiches and set up his grill on the footpath outside. He also apparently made a mint from late night catering on rock and roll package shows.
Born in Philadelphia in 1940, Burke is probably best known as the original writer and performer of Everybody Needs Somebody to Love, covered by The Rolling Stones in 1964, as well as by Wilson Pickett and The Blues Brothers. His first hit for Atlantic was Just Out Of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms), covering a country song, and you can get a fair idea of the range of sources he drew from from the 1992 two-disc Home In Your Heart: The Best Of Solomon Burke (Rhino/Atlantic), though there are numerous compilations and a myriad of individual albums. There are more than thirty in the iTunes Store alone, though Home In Your Heart doesn't appear there.
Given the apparent on-line non-availability of Home In Your Heart, if asked to specify something to sample, Hughesy would point would-be listeners to any of the Best ofs, or for something more recent the 2002 Joe Henry produced Don't Give Up On Me or that Live at North Sea Jazz DVD.
I know it's been said before and will certainly be said again, but we won't be seeing his like again. A cliché, perhaps, but it's repetition that creates clichés and things don't always get repeated because of laziness. We're all, so we're told, individuals, so I guess it applies to all of us.
But some of us are more individualistic than most.
Some links:
Passing reported on Billboard and Pollstar Tributes from NPR here and here.