hypersongs

Charles Bradley

A soul singer from Gainesville, Florida and Brooklyn, a James Brown impersonator for decades who made his debut album No Time for Dreaming on Daptone at 62, and whose "The World (Is Going Up in Flames)" opens it.

Brooklyn, California and a James Brown act

Charles Edward Bradley was born on November 5, 1948 in Gainesville, Florida, and moved as a child to Brooklyn. In 1962 he was taken to see James Brown at the Apollo, which inspired him. He later trained as a chef through Job Corps in Bar Harbor, Maine, and worked as a cook for about ten years, then traveled west and settled in California in 1977, doing odd jobs and playing small shows for about twenty years, including as a James Brown impersonator. In the mid-1990s he returned to Brooklyn and performed in local clubs as Black Velvet.

Daptone says its relationship with him began about a decade before his first album, when Gabriel Roth and Neal Sugarman saw his James Brown tribute act and signed him; Thomas Brenneck produced him throughout. Daptone began releasing his records on vinyl in 2002 with "Take It as It Come", then "Now That I'm Gone (Look How You're Crying)" in 2004 and, in 2007 or 2008, "The World (Is Going Up in Flames)" with the Menahan Street Band.

The albums

No Time for Dreaming arrived on January 25, 2011, when he was 62. Victim of Love (April 2, 2013) reached 130 on the Billboard 200 and 17 on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, and Changes (April 1, 2016) contains his Black Sabbath cover and the title song used for Big Mouth. The documentary Charles Bradley: Soul of America, directed by Poull Brien, premiered at SXSW in the spring of 2012. He performed on Later... with Jools Holland on May 4, 2012, at the Apollo for the Daptone Super Soul Revue in December 2014 and at SXSW in March 2016.

Setlist.fm lists 320 setlists, the last on August 6, 2017 at the Kaslo Jazz Etc. Festival. He died on September 23, 2017 in Brooklyn, aged 68. A posthumous album, Black Velvet, came out on November 9, 2018, compiled by Brenneck. NPR called him a totemic artist for Daptone, and one review said he echoes the evocative delivery of Otis Redding.

Albums

  • No Time for Dreaming 2011 · Daptone / Dunham

    His debut, made with the Menahan Street Band when he was 62.

Songs

  • The World (Is Going Up in Flames) No Time for Dreaming · 2011

    Bradley's signature song with the Menahan Street Band, first a Daptone single in the late 2000s and the lead single of his debut album.

Sources

  1. Charles Bradley (singer), Wikipedia
  2. Charles Bradley, Daptone Records
  3. No Time for Dreaming, Wikipedia
  4. Charles Bradley: Soul of America, Roco Films