Entertainment

Single Session Launched Percy Sledge, No. 1 Hit, and a Sound

Published

10 years ago

April 15, 2015

In this Oct. 28, 2008 file photo, Percy Sledge kneels as he performs “When a Man Loves a Woman” along with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section at the Musicians Hall of Fame awards show in Nashville, Tenn. Sledge, who recorded the classic 1966 soul ballad “When a Man Loves a Woman,” died, Tuesday April 14, 2015. He was 74. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

JAY REEVES, Associated Press
REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press

MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. (AP) — Sound engineer Jimmy Johnson knew he had captured something special on tape as Percy Sledge finished singing “When a Man Loves a Woman” in a recording studio in 1965.

Sledge, who died Tuesday, grew up singing in nearby cotton fields of northwest Alabama and never had been in a studio before that day. He didn’t even know how to work a microphone during that first session, Johnson said.

Johnson had to twirl the volume dials on the recording machine just to keep Sledge’s untrained voice at the correct levels during the session, but it worked. The track would become a No. 1 hit in 1966 and establish Sledge as a rhythm-and-blues singer of the first order.

“It gave us chills,” Johnson said.

Afterward, Sledge became a star and helped his native northwest Alabama establish itself as a recording Mecca that drew Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, Bob Seger and other top-shelf stars of the 1960s and ’70s in search of the “Muscle Shoals Sound.”

Johnson, now 72, said it all began when Sledge sang “When a Man Loves a Woman,” with its haunting lyrics and his mournful, blue-eyed style.

“Everything lined up for this,” said Johnson, who played rhythm guitar for the great Muscle Shoals studio group called “The Swampers.”

“I mean, the song was one of the best songs I’ve ever heard even to this day. The lyrics were incredible. The melody was wonderful. Percy’s voice and the job he did,” Johnson said in his home overlooking the Tennessee River. “I mean, hey, it still holds up today.”

Johnson’s business partner, 71-year-old bass player David Hood, another of the legendary studio musicians from Muscle Shoals, said he owed his career to Sledge and described him as the “nicest person you’d ever want to meet.”

Hood — the father of Drive-By Truckers front man Patterson Hood — played with Sledge for years and last saw him in the fall, when friends threw a benefit show for Sledge after learning he had been diagnosed with liver disease.

“He was very sick, very weak, but he did come up on stage and sing “When a Man Loves a Woman,” Hood said.

Sledge, who soared from part-time singer and hospital orderly to lasting fame with his aching, forlorn performance on the classic song, was 74 when he died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

His family said in a statement released through his manager, Mark Lyman, that Sledge died at his home after a yearlong struggle with cancer. The cause of death was liver failure, Lyman said.

Despite having other hits Sledge became known for “When a Man Loves a Woman.” It was the first No. 1 hit from Muscle Shoals, and the first gold record for Atlantic Records.

Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler later called the song “a transcendent moment” and “a holy love hymn.” Sledge’s hit became a standard that sustained his long touring career in the United States, Europe and South Africa and led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. It was a favorite at weddings — Sledge himself did the honors at a ceremony for musician and actor Steve Van Zandt — and often turned up in movies, including “The Big Chill,” ”The Crying Game” and a 1994 Meg Ryan drama named for the song’s title.

Recognizable by his wide, gap-toothed smile, Sledge had a handful of other hits between 1966 and 1968, including “Warm and Tender Love,” ”It Tears Me Up,” ”Out of Left Field” and “Take Time to Know Her.” He returned to the charts in 1974 with “I’ll Be Your Everything.”

Before he became famous, Sledge worked in the cotton fields around his hometown of Leighton in northwest Alabama and took a job in a hospital in nearby Sheffield. He also spent weekends playing with a rhythm-and-blues band called the Esquires. A hospital patient heard him singing while working and recommended him to record producer Quin Ivy.

In the 2013 documentary “Muscle Shoals,” Sledge recalled recording the song: “When I came into the studio, I was shaking like a leaf. I was scared.” He added that it was the “same melody that I sang when I was out in the fields.”

“I just wailed out in the woods and let the echo come back to me.”

Sledge said the song was inspired by a girlfriend who left him for a modeling career after he was laid off from a construction job in 1965. But in a decision that likely cost him a fortune, he gave the songwriting credits to two Esquires bandmates, bassist Calvin Lewis and organist Andrew Wright, who helped him with it.

While identified with Muscle Shoals, Sledge lived for most of his career in Baton Rouge. He was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

Dick Cooper, curator of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, said Sledge’s biggest hit laid the foundation for decades of music.

“‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ is one of the greatest and most compelling of the soul ballads that have ever been recorded,” he said. “It set a trend that was followed throughout the ’60s and ’70s by a number of artists.”

___

Santana reported from New Orleans. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Brian Slodysko in Baton Rouge, and Mesfin Fekadu and Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

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Arts and Culture

In ‘Affrilachia: Testimonies,’ Puts Blacks in Appalacia on the Map

Published

6 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Author Chris Aluka. Photo courtesy of Chris Aluka.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez

An average oak tree is bigger around than two people together can reach.

That mighty tree starts out with an acorn the size of a nickel, ultimately growing to some 80 feet tall, with a canopy of a hundred feet or more across.

And like the new book, “Affrilachia” by Chris Aluka Berry (with Kelly Elaine Navies and Maia A. Surdam), its roots spread wide and wider.

Affriclachia is a term a Kentucky poet coined in the 1990s referring to the Black communities in Appalachia who are similarly referred to as Affrilachians.

In 2016, “on a foggy Sunday morning in March,” Berry visited Affrilachia for the first time by going the Mount Zion AME Zion Church in Cullowhee, North Carolina. The congregation was tiny; just a handful of people were there that day, but a pair of siblings stood out to him.

According to Berry, Ann Rogers and Mae Louise Allen lived on opposite sides of town, and neither had a driver’s license. He surmised that church was the only time the elderly sisters were together then, but their devotion to one another was clear.

As the service ended, he asked Allen if he could visit her. Was she willing to talk about her life in the Appalachians, her parents, her town?

She was, and arrangements were made, but before Barry could get back to Cullowhee, he learned that Allen had died. Saddened, he wondered how many stories are lost each day in mountain communities where African Americans have lived for more than a century.

“I couldn’t make photographs of the past,” he says, “but I could document the people and places living now.”

In doing so he also offers photographs that he collected from people he met in ‘Affrilachia,’ in North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, at a rustic “camp” that was likely created by enslaved people, at churches, and in modest houses along highways.

The people he interviewed recalled family tales and community stories of support, hardship, and home.

Says coauthor Navies, “These images shout without making a sound.”

If it’s true what they say about a picture being worth 1,000 words, then “Affrilachia,” as packed with photos as it is, is worth a million.

With that in mind, there’s not a lot of narrative inside this book, just a few poems, a small number of very brief interviews, a handful of memories passed down, and some background stories from author Berry and his co-authors. The tales are interesting but scant.

For most readers, though, that lack of narrative isn’t going to matter much. The photographs are the reason why you’d have this book.

Here are pictures of life as it was 50 years or a century ago: group photos, pictures taken of proud moments, worn pews, and happy children. Some of the modern pictures may make you wonder why they’re included, but they set a tone and tell a tale.

This is the kind of book you’ll take off the shelf, and notice something different every time you do. “Affrilachia” doesn’t contain a lot of words, but it’s a good choice when it’s time to branch out in your reading.

“Affrilachia: Testimonies,” by Chris Aluka Berry with Kelly Elaine Navies and Maia A. Surdam

c.2024, University of Kentucky Press, $50.00.

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Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

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2 days ago

December 20, 2024

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Arts and Culture

Promise Marks Performs Songs of Etta James in One-Woman Show, “A Sunday Kind of Love” at the Black Repertory Theater in Berkeley

“The (show) is a fictional story about a character named Etta, aka Lady Peaches,” said Marks. “She falls in love with Johnny Rhythm, leader of the Rhythm Players Band and headliners of Madam G’s Glitta Lounge.” Marks channeled the essence of Etta James, singing favorites such as “Sugar on the Floor” and “At Last.”

Published

5 days ago

December 18, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo Courtesy Of Promise Marks.

Special to the Post

It was “A Sunday Kind of Love” at the Black Repertory Group Theater in Berkeley on Saturday night, Dec. 7. The one-woman musical based on the music of Etta James featured the multi-talented singer Promise Marks

Marks, who wrote and directed the musical, also owns PM Productions.

Marks channeled the essence of Etta James, singing favorites such as “Sugar on the Floor” and “At Last.”

In between her soulful songs, Marks narrated impactful moments of the love story and journey of blues and forgiveness.

Marks sultry voice carried the audience back to an era that echoed with the power of Black music and a time of great change.

Marks said James shared love for the Black community by singing at gatherings during the Civil Rights Movement uplifting the people.

“She spoke to the movement, spoke to the people, and let her music speak for itself,” Marks said.

Backing the musical’s monologues, images and videos of Etta James are projected for the audience to view. While the production is fictional, Marks infused script with the unfairness and heartbreak James experienced while performing.

Marks performed gospel artist Donnie McClurkin’s “We Fall Down” as she narrated acts of reconciliation and forgiveness among the characters at Johnny Rhythm’s deathbed.

Marks, who regularly sings for the Miss America Pageant, was asked to perform as Etta James last year. “(At the event) a lady yelled out to me: ‘You’re Etta James!’ And then the audience went crazy. I said to myself, ‘I may have something here,’” she said.

Within 12 months, Marks created the musical production, which featured a dozen songs honoring “the great legacy of Etta James,” she said.

Marks says she was saddened to see how Etta James was often judged by the struggles in her life and wanted to offer attendees a more layered view.

“Etta’s life was so big. I want people to know that she was more than her drug addiction,” said Marks. “We can’t make that her legacy. Her catalog is too amazing. You can’t just be that and have the catalog that she (created). I don’t want the addiction to be the focus: I want her music, her element, her sassiness, and what she brought to be the focus – her woman-ness, that she was strong, and I wanted to honor that.”

Set Designer Nora Burnette says she created the set segments to mirror James’ life story. A set designer for BRG since 2016, she explained that her process of researching the scenario and the character serve as her inspiration for her design.

“I try to design a set as close to real life as possible so that the actress can deliver the performance sincerely,” said Burnette. “By creating the right setting, it helps the actors release the true essence of a character.”

The set brought the story to life and absolutely floored Marks. “Once Promise (Marks) saw the actual set, she understood my vision: ‘Wow, you get me. You get it,'” Marks told the designer.

Born Jamesetta Hawkins, Etta James, began her career in 1954 and gained fame with hits such “At Last” and “I’d Rather Go Blind.” She faced a number of personal problems, before making a musical comeback in the late 1980s with the album “Seven Year Itch.”

Co-producer and BRG Development Director, Sean Vaughn Scott, works with Overseer Production. According to producer Pamela Spikes, “Marks talent truly does Etta’s life story justice.”

Pam Jacobs of Hercules, a friend of Marks’ mom, Jackie Smith, said, Marks “was fabulous and sang all of those songs flawlessly.”

“I’m so proud of my daughter,” said Smith.

Marks, who has served as an instructor for BRG, will return on Feb. 21- 23 for an encore run of the musical.

“It’s an honor to be a part of the BRG (Black Repertory Group) family and continue our executive director Dr. Mona Vaughn Scott’s vision for the Black Repertory Group theater,” said Marks.

The Black Repertory Group Theatre is located at 3201 Adeline St., Berkeley, CA 94703. For information, visit: BlackRepertoryGroup.com