Charles Bradley
James Brown impersonator who found fame late in life
CHARLES BRADLEY, the funk/ soul singer, who has died of cancer aged 68, survived extreme poverty, homelessness, family tragedy and years struggling to make the big time as a James Brown impersonator, before being signed to Daptone Records in 2002, aged 53.
He released the first of three albums, No Time For Dreaming in 2011, aged 62, and had hits with Changes (a cover of the Black Sabbath ballad), and Ain’t It A Sin. His backing band gave him the nickname “Screaming Eagle of Soul”.
He was born into poverty in Gainesville, Florida, on November 5 1948. Abandoned by his mother, from the age of eight months to eight years he was brought up by his grandmother, until his mother returned and took him and his siblings to live in a cockroach-infested slum in Brooklyn.
When he was 14 his older sister took him to see a performance by the soul singer James Brown. “He had those strobe lights and effects lights on him,” Bradley recalled in an interview. “And I said, ‘Oh my God, I want to be like that’.” Returning home, he began practising Brown’s acrobatic moves with a microphone stand by tying a string to a broom handle.
Soon afterwards he ran away from home and lived on the streets until he was rescued, aged 16, by the US Jobs Corps programme: “They sent me away to a place where you could pick up a trade and I went there to learn cooking. When I was there, we had a little rock ‘n’ roll band – a three-piece – and that’s where I did my first vocals.”
For several decades Bradley drifted between jobs, working as a cook, at a hospital for the mentally ill and as a caretaker in an apartment block. In the evenings he performed his James Brown tribute act, hoping that someone might offer him a contract. “I even went to their homes in Beverly Hills,” he recalled. “They called the police and told me to never go there again.”
He eventually returned to New York to care for his mother after she told him she was ill. In 1996, however, he himself almost died after suffering a severe reaction to penicillin. That same year, he awoke one morning to the sound of sirens, only discovering later that it was the police attending the scene of his brother’s murder a few blocks away.
Bradley got his big break when he was spotted by Gabriel Roth, co-founder of Daptone Records, performing his tribute act in New York. Roth brought him together with the producer Tommy Brenneck and the two worked on getting Bradley some original songs to record, the first of which were released as very limited-run singles in 2002.
After making his debut album in 2011, the following year Bradley was the subject of a documentary film, Soul Of America, which was shown at international festivals. His follow up album, Victim Of Love, came out in 2013 and his third album, Changes, in 2016.
There was some surprise that a performer who wrote most of his own material should choose a Black Sabbath cover for his title track, but he explained that the song’s lyrics (“It took so long to realise that I can still hear her last goodbyes, now all my days are filled with tears. I wish I could go back and change these years …”) reminded him of his mother, who died in 2014.
As his success grew, Bradley appeared on popular television shows and went on tour. Last year he played a series of dates in Britain, headlining at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival.
Yet he remained a modest man, happily carrying out DIY tasks for elderly neighbours.
He was unmarried.
Charles Bradley, born November 5 1948, died September 23 2017