It’s a sad day for music. One of my all time favorite quote from a book: “How can you like Art Garfunkel and Solomon Burke? It’s like saying you support the Israelis and the Palestinians.”
I’ll be posting YouTube videos later.
Update. It’s hard to find good live performances on YouTube, most of them are from the last few years, when he wasn’t quite his old self. But this, from 1987, is pretty good.
Ross Hershberger
Sounds like Hornby. High Fidelity?
Mudge
Burke is survived by 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.
Wow.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Ross Hershberger:
Yes!
arguingwithsignposts
I was thinking this was going to be another Burkean bells post. Sadder news. 21 kids … wow is right.
beltane
I am ashamed to admit I had never heard of Solomon Burke before this, but with 21 kids I’d say he was a very prolific fellow. The super in an apartment building I used to live in had 23 children. After the first 15 or so he began to run out of names so the younger ones had names like Spartacus, Zeus, and Socrates.
liberal
OT—Scumminess at the Fed.
Bnut
His prowess was legendary.
jeffreyw
Singin the blueberries.
Nellcote
Bless the Rolling Stones for their boost of his later career revival:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NPN4P3UyNk&feature=related
RIP Solomon Burke
debit
@jeffreyw: Dude, you’re killing me. I’m going for a run in a little bit, so this morning I’ve only had a banana and a Clif bar. And now drool. Lots and lots of drool.
Nellcote
from the Guardian, a live in clips:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/blog/2010/oct/10/solomon-burke-clips
Just Some Fuckhead
In a thousand years, everyone will be descended from Solomon Burke like all of us are now descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages.
El Cid
Well,
Kind of a bad comparison, because opposition to standard Israeli state militarism and Palestinian viable state aspirations despite their corrupt and incompetent leadership is in the interest of both populations. Anyway.
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: That looks delicious! Waiting for a new Homer update? How is he and how are the other kittehs?
JCT
Blast from the past — I went to middle school with Solomon Burke, Jr., They lived right off Mulholland Dr and I lived in one of the canyons below. We sat together on the school bus every day. Profoundly nice guy, soft-spoken (really good looking on top of it) — you would have no idea how famous his dad was, Junior had no attitude whatsoever.
I remember telling my father about my new pal, he went by “Junior” — so my dad asked what his real name was and got this look of amazement that Solomon Burke’s kid rode the school bus.
I had no idea he had so many siblings, though — whoa.
conumbdrum
One of the all-time soul greats. I’ve never understood why Burke is so little known compared to Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke, Al Green and James Brown, ‘cos he is every bit their equal.
But after all, the genre is filled with giants who never truly got their due. James Carr, Garnett Mimms, Howard Tate, Doris Duke, Eddie and Ernie… I could go on. Lots of folks are missing out on some truly colossal soul sounds when they confine themselves to the artists they encounter on oldies radio.
Solomon Burke’s double CD collection on Rhino, Home in Your Heart, will tear out your heart and serve it up on a bed of rice.
Josh
El Cid, so you’re saying that you do like both Burke and Garfunkel?
Carol
Twenty one kids-he had to hustle every day of his life. Maybe that’s why he didn’t get the attention of some. That many kids (one wife or two?) doesn’t leave that much time for hanging out around the publicity hounds and schmoozing at parties where you can network with people who get your name in the papers. Segregation didn’t help matters-by the time things began to really loosen up, Burke was close to thirty and with a houseful of kids, which means he couldn’t be molded into the next big pop icon.
russell
Sometimes you want cucumber and hummus on pita, sometimes you want a Cuban sandwich.
Sometimes you want a Campari and soda, sometimes you want some Cold Duck.
Sometimes you dream of Gwyneth Paltrow, sometimes you dream of Rosie Perez.
It’s like that.
If you feel like crying,
come on, come on,
cry to me.
RIP Solomon Burke. ‘Nuff said.
forked tongue
This is one of those videos that just shows a spinning 45 on a turntable, but just take a listen to this song willya?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w0ovyYLz9I&p=C5EE3054C72FEF65&playnext=1&index=36
ChrisNYC
I sat next to him on a NY-London flight. He was lovely. His granddaughter, who was sort of his caretaker was fussing over him — running up from coach (I was in first because I was on business). He spilled a soda on me and lamented on his being overweight numerous times and told me about what the Blind Boys of Alabama are REALLY like. He was laughing about how they would, in the early days, ride around in an old mess of car and sometimes end up at redneck bars. Anyway, he said they were nice, really nice.