Long Live The King!
Solomon Burke, the last reigning king of soul, died today in The Netherlands. Solomon recorded almost 40 albums in a career dating back to the early 1955. He wrote the classic, Everybody Needs Somebody". Burke was born in 1940 in Philadelphia, fathered 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great grand children.
He toured and recorded constantly and was en route to a concert in Amsterdam on Oct. 12th when he died.
This is his funkafied and revitalized Memphis Soul version of Bob Dylan's song, Maggies Farm, from 1965....
2 comments:
I was a big soul fan in the 1960s [and hated how the genre was bastardized in the 1970s]. I still have Down in the Valley [my favourite] and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love on original 45s.
On the other hand, at the time I was a bigger fan of Otis Redding, and who knows what he might have produced had he lived to the age of 70.
Well, Otis left a legacy as wide as the ocean, as high as a mountain and longer than any of our own short lives.
Sittin on his dock, staring at the bay, no one will ever know how he would have spent his days...
I am a huge fan of a French Soul Singer who goes by the name of Ben l"oncle Soul. He's a young singer of of African origin, not American, but he has managed to channel Otis in a way that is truly contemporary. In other words, he has the soul, the voice but even more, an individual unique vision.
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