The song Charles Bradley wished he had written: “All-time favourite”
In 1962, a teenage Charles Bradley‘s life path was shaped in one moment. Taken to New York’s Apollo Theater to see funk and soul hurricane James Brown. Transfixed, the young Bradley set to work practising Brown’s performance style and stage mannerisms with such studious attention he found work as an impersonator, supplementing the odd jobs he worked in California before heading back to his Brooklyn hometown in the mid-1990s.
On the advice of a friend, Bradley strolled down to the Daptone Records office in 2002 and introduced himself to the label. Founders Gabriel Roth and Neal Sugarman headed to West Village’s Tarheel Lounge club to see Black Velvet in action. Impressed with his raw power despite only playing covers, Bradley was invited to the studio and cut his first professional recording, laying down vocals for The Sugarman 3’s ‘Take It As It Comes’ from their Pure Cane Sugar.
Bradley became part of the Daptone family, even flexing his manual labour experience in assisting with the label’s move to Bushwick’s Troutman Street, helping mud the walls, rebuilding the basement steps, and instructing how to properly install radiators. Befriending The Dap-Kings guitarist Thomas ‘TNT’ Brenneck, a mutual creative spark and songwriting drive resulted in several singles, including the smash ‘The World (Is Going Up In Flames)’, his biggest-selling single.
At 62 years old, Bradley dropped his debut album, 2011’s No Time For Dreaming. Backed by Menahan Street Band, his first LP wowed soul fans with its rich and authentic document of an impassioned soul offering that many felt hadn’t heard in a long time. Brought to a wider audience with his acclaimed Soul of America documentary feature exploring his tumultuous life and struggle on his road to stardom, Bradley’s jump from plumber to Glastonbury Festival name must have been dizzyingly surreal.
Speaking to Tidal in 2016, Bradley offered a crucial insight into the songs of his life. While there are no surprises, he reels off cuts from Isaac Hayes, Bobby Womack, and Diana Ross with evident, years-long love, and the Eagles also get a look in, their ‘Take It to the Limit’ reminding him of his time on the road. When selecting the song he wished he’d written, he goes straight back to where it all started.
Revealing, “‘It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World’ by James Brown. Just one of my all-time favourite songs, which I always loved and always performed when I cover James Brown.”
Released in 1966 and forming a live staple of his sets for the rest of his life, the joint-written soul classic with partner and brief lover Betty Jean Newsome wades through humanity’s winding progress supposedly paved by male innovation, but no matter what endeavour is reached or figurative mountain is climbed, it means nothing without the loving support of one’s woman. Written firmly within a heterosexual lens, its roll call of chauvinistic triumph could age the cut like milk were it not for its elusive and ambiguous final lines describing man’s loss in life’s wilderness.
Featuring in Black Velvet’s set as much as the ‘Soul Brother No. 1’, it’s a number easily imagined as injected with natural, heartfelt power every time he played it until his tragic death of cancer in 2017.
