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July 5th, 2019, 2:05 AM
#1
Listening Group Week 1: No Time for Dreaming by Charles Bradley
my musical tastes are pretty varied and there's not much that i'll just outright deny at this stage in my life. but i think, with very little doubt, that american soul and r&b from the 60's and 70's, such as the steady flow of amazing tracks released by motown and stax records, among others, is the genre of music i get the most enjoyment out of. ranging across a large swath of energies and emotions on any given track is a gift that i continually find myself being grateful for whenever i decide to listen. during car rides when i was growing up, if it wasn't sports talk radio, it was WOGL 98.1 FM, the local 'oldies' format radio station for philadelphia. lots of early rock and roll, white dudes crooning and a shit-ton of motown, and i instantly gravitated to the 'motown sound' with it's accented back beats, melodies, call and response singing and abundant use of horns and strings. even as a kid i picked up on the distinct pluck and liveliness in the pop hits, and the affected passions of the ballads, and their impact on me has only magnified and reverberated, like ripples in still water, as i've gotten older in age and experiences.
so with that said, i'm a sucker for modern acts that call back to that sound and are able to genuinely replicate what makes it so special, and a few years back i stumbled upon charles bradley and found just that. after being raised by his maternal grandmother for the first eight years of his life in florida, his mother, who had abandoned him at eight months old, took him back to live with her in brooklyn, where his bedroom was a basement with a sand floor. upon running away from home at age fourteen in the early 60's, in an attempt to escape the dire living conditions, he spent a couple of years homeless, living on the streets during the days and sleeping in subway cars at night. after enlisting in a government jobs program, he found himself working as a cook in maine, which is where he first performed as a singer. after ten years in maine, he headed west, hitchhiking across the country before settling in california. he spent the next twenty years working odd jobs and playing small shows until his mother called him back to brooklyn in 1996, wanting to get to know him. it was during this time he started to moonlight and make a living as a james brown impersonator by the name of 'black velvet.' this stretch wasn't without hardships, as he almost died due to an allergic reaction to penicillin and in what would became the inspiration behind one of his most emotional songs, waking at his mothers house to a scene of police and ambulances outside, who were arriving to the scene of his brother's murder down the street. while performing as black velvet, the co-founder of daptone records, most famously known for sharon jones & the dap-kings, discovered bradley and introduced him to some artists and producers at the label, who invited him to sit in during rehearsals and participate, with some recordings being released on vinyl in 2002.
it wasn't until nearly a decade later, in 2011, that these earlier recordings were taken and assembled into a proper debut album for bradley, titled 'no time for dreaming.' backed by the menahan street band, who've been sampled quite a bit in the last decade by artists like jay-z and kendrick lamar, bringing a memphis blues sound that bradley gets to wrap himself in, the group creates an album that you could mistake for one ripped from the 1960's if not for the apparent modern productions values. the MSB provide a muscle shoals grittiness to the instrumentation that let's bradley and his wilson pickett-esque vocals take the spotlight.
bradley recorded two more albums before passing away after losing a fight to stomach cancer in september of 2017. a fourth album was released posthumously, cobbled together with unused tracks and covers from the previous three. there were days during the year preceding his death where i'd play his criminally short discography over the entire course of an eight hour shift at work, and they helped to make those days very enjoyable. the late start to sharing his gift, his pain and passion, on a wider scale is sad to think about when you consider all the great work we've likely missed, but i'm glad he got around to it eventually.
Last edited by Morrison; July 5th, 2019 at 2:09 AM.
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July 5th, 2019, 2:27 AM
#2
What an immense first go. Never heard this album before, nor the story. What a great build up. Thanks Morrison, looking forward to this hugely.
@JP @Matthew @MikeHunt @kdestiny @Peter Griffin @Simon @BBF @wardy @Donald @Cewsh @Melly @The Beer Monster @Hurley @Grimario
Last edited by The Rosk; July 5th, 2019 at 7:33 AM.
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July 5th, 2019, 3:32 AM
#3