In The Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul Of Wilson Pickett

Tony Fletcher

Rock author Tony Fletcher (Keith Moon, Smiths, R.E.M.) tells Pickett’s story with testimony from the Southern soul man’s family and partners fleshing out later, less wellknown chapters of a tale whose early arc is familiar from many books on soul. Schooled in gospel in Alabama, Pickett moved north to Detroit in 1956 aged 15 and screamed to prominence in The Falcons. Their raw, exultant I Found A Love alerted Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler, who signed him in ’64 and, after a couple of New York flops, sent him back south to write and record with the M.G.’s guitarist Steve Cropper at Stax. Pickett made more indelible soul at Muscle Shoals, but his drinking led to drugs, and both fuelled his often violent temper. Like Otis Redding’s success, Pickett’s was relatively brief, but their music’s legacy lives on. Otis died young, enshrining his fame and our love of him; Wilson’s popularity waned during a slow, steady decline. The sense of talent unfulfilled in both is immense.