He performed at festivals including Coachella, Lollapalooza and, in 2014, Glastonbury as part of the Daptone Super Soul Revue alongside Jones.īradley was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2016. The third and final long-player, Changes, took its title from a cover of the 1972 Black Sabbath song, the lyrics of which struck a chord with Bradley following his mother’s recent death. His second, critically acclaimed album, Victim of Love, sealed Bradley’s reputation, and spawned the hit Strictly Reserved for You. His first single release was Take It As It Come, Pts 1 and 2 (2002), and he released several more singles over the next few years, which would reappear on his debut album. After some unsuccessful recording attempts, the label paired Bradley with Brenneck, who was the songwriter and guitarist for the Bullets and then later with the Menahan Street Band, who would become Bradley’s regular accompanists.
The song Heartaches and Pain, from No Time for Dreaming, is a vivid depiction of Joseph’s death.īradley had been persevering with his James Brown shows in New York as Black Velvet, but when he heard that another New York club singer, Sharon Jones, had been enjoying some success with Daptone Records, Bradley approached the label’s co-founder Gabe Roth. Bradley remained haunted by the sight of Joseph’s murdered body, but also recalled his brother telling him to “follow your dreams” and pursue a musical career. They would stick this big needle in my back four times a day.”Įven worse followed when his brother was shot and killed by one of Bradley’s nephews. “They … put ice all over my body to break the fever. “I had a fever of 104.7F ,” he remembered. In New York he struggled to shake off a fever, then almost died in hospital when he was treated with penicillin, to which he was allergic. In 1994 he moved back to Brooklyn after receiving a call from his mother (“She said, ‘Son, give me a chance to know you. For nearly two decades he took a variety of jobs while picking up extra money doing his James Brown performances, where he used such stage names as the Screaming Eagle of Soul, Black Velvet and even James Brown Jr.
He arrived in California via Canada, Alaska and Seattle. Photograph: Mark Shawįor 10 years Bradley worked as a chef at a Maine hospital, then in 1977 decided to travel across North America. Fortified with gin, he thrilled the crowd with a James Brown impersonation.Ĭharles Bradley in 2014. He finally managed it when he was 18 and working at the Jobs Corp, a government training centre, in Maine, when his workmates persuaded him to sing in the girls’ dormitory. “I’d seen entertainers, but nothing like James Brown on stage.”īradley practised Brown-style microphone moves using a broom with string attached, but was initially shy about performing in front of an audience. “When I first saw him, it was like the resurrection,” said Bradley. But at about the same time, in 1962, his sister took him to a James Brown concert at the Apollo theatre in Harlem, and this proved to be a pivotal moment in the boy’s life. He never met his father.Īt 14 Bradley left his mother’s home, where he had only a basement to sleep in – “I was afraid that she was going to hurt me,” he said in Brien’s film – and for a time survived by sleeping on subway trains or sheltering in old cars. Brien realised that Bradley’s life story was something a fiction writer would barely have dared to invent.īorn in Gainesville, Florida, Bradley was raised by his maternal grandmother until he was eight, when he moved to Brooklyn, New York, to rejoin his mother, Inez, who had left him when he was eight months old, and his older brother, Joseph. In 2012, Bradley’s story was told in Poull Brien’s documentary film Charles Bradley: Soul of America, Brien having met the singer when he directed the video for The World (Is Going Up in Flames). “When I have the blues and I have things bothering me deeply, that’s the best time to write a song.” “You have to tape it right then and there, because that’s when it comes out natural,” Bradley observed.
Brenneck had discovered that the best way to tap into the singer’s creativity was to play a guitar riff with a drumbeat and then get Bradley to tell stories about his painful and star-crossed life over the top of it.
Once again the Bradley/Brenneck partnership had written most of the material. Bradley released two further albums, Victim of Love (2013) and Changes (2016).
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