![]() However, Brenneck wanted a singer and reached out to Bradley to work on some music together.īradley and Brenneck would often just talk about life, drawing inspiration for songs, and forging a friendship. In the following few years, Brenneck moved to Bushwick and began making all instrumental recordings eventually releasing Menahan Street Band's debut album, Make the Road by Walking on Brenneck's own Daptone imprint Dunham Records. They hit it off, cut a handful of Daptone singles and played a handful of shows. In 2003, Roth brought Bradley out to Staten Island to meet with Thomas "TNT" Brenneck-then a guitarist in the Dap-Kings-and his band The Bullets. He even coaxed Roth to run a new gas line all the way upstairs to the kitchen for an oven that he insisted he needed to cook for the Daptone family. When Daptone took over the two-story house in Bushwick that would become known as the "House of Soul,” he mudded the walls, rebuilt the basement steps, and taught Roth how to install radiators. A few weeks later, they brought him into the studio to cut "Take It As It Come," released in 2002 as Bradley's first single and featured on Daptone's sophomore release, The Sugarman 3 & Co.'s Pure Cane Sugar.īradley became an instrumental part of the Daptone family, both musically and beyond. Though he was performing covers, Roth and Sugarman were impressed by the raw feeling and rhythm in Bradley's act. At the urging of Bradley, Roth and his partner Neal Sugarman tucked into the Tarheel Lounge on Bedford Street to see Charles as "Black Velvet"-his James Brown cover act with Jimmy Hill's Allstarz. (To this day, Roth has never solved the mystery of who it was that had sent Bradley to see him or how he got his home address). "I heard you were looking for a singer," he told Roth. His tough times were well documented in autobiographical songs like “Why Is It So Hard” and “Heartaches & Pain”-which tells the story of waking up to the ringing of gunshots and sirens on the day his brother Joseph was murdered-and in Charles Bradley: Soul of America, Poull Brien’s 2012 documentary following Charles in the days leading to the release of this breakthrough first album No Time For Dreaming.Īlthough Bradley didn’t release his first album until 2011, his relationship with Daptone Records started a decade earlier, when his friend sent him to knock on the door of Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth's basement apartment in Williamsburg. The story of Bradley's remarkable rise from the depths of poverty, neglect and violence to the heights of international celebrity has been told many times. ![]() It features new songs recorded during the sessions from each of his three albums, heard here for the very first time in all their scorching glory: "Can't Fight the Feeling," "Fly Little Girl" and the heart-wrenching "I Feel a Change" hard core rarities like his funk-bomb duet with LaRose Jackson, "Luv Jones," the psychedelic groover, "(I Hope You Find) The Good Life" and the ever-illusive alternate full band electric version of "Victim of Love" sought-after covers of Nirvana's "Stay Away," Neal Young's "Heart of Gold" and Rodriguez' "Slip Away" and the title track "Black Velvet," a stirring Menahan Street Band instrumental to which Charles was never able to cut a vocal. Rather, this album is a profound exploration through the less-travelled corners of the soulful universe that Charles and his longtime producer, co-writer and friend Thomas "TNT" Brenneck created in the studio together over their decade-long partnership. Though chronologically the material spans Charles' entire career, this is no anthology, "greatest hits" or other shallow rehashing of the songs that already made him famous. And that's why we love him.īlack Velvet is a celebration of Charles Bradley, lovingly assembled by his friends and family at Dunham/Daptone Records. It's why he sang and danced like a lunatic. It's why he took such great care of a mother that had abandoned him. ![]() That is why he jumped off the stage and literally tried to hug everybody he could. He felt that if he loved enough–-if we all loved each other enough-we could take away the world’s pain and sadness. What was really special about him and made him different from everybody else in the world was how he understood his pain as a cry for universal love and humanity. CHARLES BRADLEY Photo by Isaac Sterling, Live at the ApolloĬharles was truly a transcendent singer who led a remarkable life, overcoming unimaginable adversity to achieve great success and international acclaim very late in his life.
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