I’m allergic to penicillin and they was feeding me penicillin and my body had shut down.” After recovering, his brother Joseph told him, “Now do something that you want to do. “I was sick as a dog,” he said in Soul of America. After getting laid off from his job after 17 years in 1994, Bradley reconnected with his estranged mother Inez, moving back to Brooklyn to take care of her.Īt the time, Bradley nearly died from an allergy. Shows would come occasionally, but Bradley was unable to find any success in music at the time. Bradley became an itinerant after leaving home, traveling across the country in 1977 after spending 10 years as a cook at a Maine hospital for the mentally ill before ending up in California. “I said, ‘Give me that mic!’ … I ain’t never stopped yet.”Ī drifter as a teen who battled with illiteracy, poverty and chronic unemployment, the Brooklyn singer would later nearly die from a penicillin allergy and find his brother murdered by Bradley’s own nephew. “I was really scared to do it, so they snuck a bottle of gin in the gym with 7-Up in it, and I got fired up,” he told Rolling Stone.
The fledgling impersonator went home, attached string to a broom to emulate Brown’s bombastic mic swings, and began impersonating the singer in private before performing his first show as Brown at age 19 in 1967.
And when they introduced him, he came flying on the stage on one leg and I said, ‘What in the hell is this?’ And I was mesmerized. When they called James Brown onstage, I’ll never forget they had this purple light and yellow light – my two favorite colors. “I didn’t know who James Brown really was but I wanted to go see. “It was breathtaking,” Bradley told Rolling Stone of the Apollo show in 2016. The show transformed Bradley, who would later find regional success in New York as a James Brown impersonator named Black Velvet. In 1962, Bradley’s sister took him to James Brown’s landmark performance at the Apollo Theater when he was 14. “We couldn’t see eye to eye and I was getting blamed for everything, so I was very bitter.” “I was afraid that she was going to hurt me, so I left,” Bradley said of his mother in the 2012 documentary Charles Bradley: Soul of America. At 14, Bradley left home and became homeless, sleeping on New York subway trains for warmth. We love you.”Ĭharles Edward Bradley was born November 5th, 1948 in Florida but his mother, who had left for New York, moved Bradley to Brooklyn when he was 8 years old. “RIP to our dear brother Charles Bradley,” veteran Afrobeat group and Daptone Records labelmate Antibalas wrote on Twitter. I mean that literally, and anyone that ever saw him knows that he honestly tried.” I think he wanted to hug each person on this planet individually. He smiled and told me, ‘I tried.’ It was probably the simplest and most inspiring thing he ever told me. “I find some solace knowing that he will continue to inspire love and music in this world for generations to come,” he added. His soulful moans and screams will echo forever on records and in the ears and hearts of those who were fortunate enough to share time with him. His pain was a cry for universal love and humanity. “Charles was somehow one of the meekest and strongest people I’ve ever known. “The world lost a ton of heart today,” Gabriel Roth, co-founder of Bradley’s label Daptone Records, said. Over the course of three albums – 2011’s No Time for Dreaming, 2013’s Victim of Love and 2016’s Changes – Bradley, known as the “Screaming Eagle of Soul,” blended heartfelt ballads of love, longing and remorse with raucous tracks celebrating joy and the survival of a hardscrabble life. Bradley was truly grateful for all the love he’s received from his fans and we hope his message of love is remembered and carried on.” Bradley headed out on the road earlier this year after receiving a clean bill of health but the cancer recently returned, spreading to his liver.”īradley’s reps added, “Thank you for your prayers during this difficult time. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in the fall of 2016 and underwent treatment. “Always a fighter, Charles battled cancer with everything he had. “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Charles Bradley,” the singer’s rep said in a statement. Charles Bradley, the acclaimed soul singer and exuberant live performer who saw his career ascend late in life, died Saturday following a bout with stomach and liver cancer.
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