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SONGS OF SOLOMON
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Solomon Burke was a pioneer, and he knew it. As early as 1936, he was a preordained minister of his family church in Philadelphia, PA (which is amazing, considering he was just being born at the time). In the late fifties, when mainstream Black music was still mostly about doo-wops and back-alley rhythm & blues, his church upbringing wouldn't let him backslide to the R&B world. His guiding light came when a Philly DJ said, "You're singing from your soul and you don't want to be an R&B singer, so what kind of singer are you going to be?" Solomon shot back: "I want to be a soul singer," as the legend has it. As Solomon told one interviewer in 1984, his early sixties hits like "Cry To Me" "wasn't like pop at that time, it wasn't country, it wasn't like R&B; the only way it could be classified was soul music. That's when it all started."
Burke wasn't the only Black singer making the transition from rhythm & blues to soul. Several others, like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and the underrated Jerry Butler, were probably thinking the same thing at the same time, but King Solomon's tale still holds water after all this time. It wasn't long before the genre evolved in different directions, as Solomon watched performers wilder than he get their chance in the spotlight: the frenzy of Wilson Pickett, the paranoid love ballads of James Carr, the youthful enthusiasm of Arthur Conley, the bent-knee begging of the Temptations' David Ruffin. Solomon, however, survived the sixties by always being in control of the situation. Solomon's first hit on Atlantic, "Just Out Of Reach Of My Two Empty Arms" (1961) was great country-soul in the Brook Benton tradition. He's not cutting loose with any horror-movie screams like Pickett or JB, but he didn't need to. Solomon's subtle shadings were what put this one over; one little screech would have messed up the whole program. Of course, there's this whiter-than-thou chorus behind him, but that's actually part of the fun. The followup was "Cry To Me," another exercise in restraint. Burke doesn't roar out of the gate begging and slobbering, but he works up to it at the climax (his "cracka cracka cracka" ad-lib at the end remains a genius moment). Solomon had earlier hitless stints on the Apollo and Singular labels in the fifties (even touring with former heavyweight champion Joe Louis to promote one record), but his tenure with Atlantic (1959-68) was when he really defined himself. Looking back, Solomon now admits, with some regrets (see interview), that "a lot of things have changed mentally for me. As you grow older, you learn to understand life a little better. I learned a great deal from Atlantic. Atlantic taught me how to walk in this life of music, it taught me how to fall and how to get myself back up."
Although Atlantic was where Solomon really got his grits, he seemed to have more of a survivor's instinct than most of his contemporaries. For a while there, it seemed like no book or article about sixties soul was complete without a Solomon Burke story. About how he got in trouble with the Apollo Theater in New York when he dared to set up a stand in the lobby selling Solomon's Magic Popcorn (the Apollo already had a concession stand of its' own, so they weren't happy about competition under the same roof). His assorted multiple businesses, including a funeral home, a limo service, and the drugstore he founded where he'd fill prescriptions by bicycling over to another pharmacy to get it filled. His 21 children (and 68 grandchildren). The lady who pressed charges against Burke when he tossed copies of his latest album (this would have been around '74) out into the crowd and hit her smack on the head. The pork chop sandwiches he sold to his fellow performers on package tours when white roadside restaurants refused them service. The endless string of weird encounters with Klansmen and sharecroppers and other Southerners who knew his records but hadn't seen his photo and thought he was white. However, it's worth mentioning that these aren't fables and half-truths whispered behind his back - most of these stories originated with Solomon himself. And, more importantly, he's still around to tell the tale with a sly grin. Many (but not all) of his hard-soul contemporaries - the ones who are still alive - are either bitter or flipped-out or in some way dysfunctional. Solomon, on the other hand, kept his wits about him; while he still carries the seriousness of his religious upbringing (and the ego needed to survive in showbiz, period), he's not too proud to laugh at himself every now & then. While Peter Guralnick, in his 1986 book Sweet Soul Music, says that Solomon was considered "too much of a wiseguy" by industry insiders, in retrospect he probably needed to be that way just to get over.
One monumental idea that never really got off the ground was the Soul Clan. Initially, this was to be a coalition between Burke, Wilson Pickett, Don Covay, Ben E. King, Otis Redding, and Joe Tex. The lineup was altered when Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967; Arthur Conley, a Redding protege, was drafted to take his mentor's place, while Pickett himself backed out. At a time when super sessions were becoming the thing, this R&B equivalent was a great idea - one single, "Soul Meeting" b/w "That's How It Feels," was released on Atlantic, along with a fairly half-assed Soul Clan album featuring both sides of the single and several solo tracks from the Clan members (why not an entire album with the five singers together?). According to Burke, the project fizzled when the power structure realized these guys, who wished to invest their money back into the Black communities, wanted to do more than make a record. Although the "Soul Meeting" single made it to #34 on Billboard's soul singles chart in 1968, Solomon charges that "the record was stopped and banned" from going any further. It was probably not an accident that Solomon left Atlantic soon after.
The Soul Clan experience didn't tame his ambitions any - after a brief stay at the Bell label (where he hit with a version of "Proud Mary," pre-Ike & Tina), he signed with the MGM label. In this writer's opinion, his recordings for this label are far from his best (essential exceptions: the title track of the Electronic Magnetism album, as well as an acoustic guitar country-blues version of "Drown In My Own Tears" that was buried on We're Almost Home - that's Solomon doing his own superb guitar work, by the way). Yet and still, as if to make up for the Soul Clan fiasco, he stretched his wings in ways he couldn't have with Atlantic. Not only did he join the ranks of Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield by scoring a movie (1972's Cool Breeze), but he also sang the theme song to Love Thy Neighbor, a comedy series about a Black couple who move in next to a bigoted white household. This ran for a few months in early 1973 as ABC's answer to All In The Family. On a fashion note, Burke's pimp attire on the cover of Electronic Magnetism (from 1971) predates Barry White by two years as far as large-sized people promoted as sex symbols. When the decision was made to recast MGM artists the Osmonds as a white Jackson Five, Burke was there to help give Donny and his brothers a soul injection. Burke even wrote "I Have A Dream" specifically for Donny Osmond, which was released just a few months before Burke left the label and recorded it himself as the title track of a Dunhill album, ca. 1974. While MGM was grooming the Osmonds to go toe to toe with the Jackson family, Solomon had his eyes on a kiddie-soul act of his own blood. Seven of his children became the Sons and Daughters of Solomon, whose entire output consisted of one MGM 45 and an album on MGM's Lion subsidiary. That album was the soundtrack to Kid Power, a cartoon adaptation of Morrie Turner's Wee Pals comic strip that was part of ABC's Saturday morning lineup during the 1972-73 season. Burke: "When you look back at history, and you look back at the publicity and the way we had it going, the Sons & Daughters of Solomon were going to be right there with the Jackson Five. We started the publicity, we started moving in the same direction with them, and then the devil came in and just turned that right around." As far as Kid Power, "It wasn't supposed to be a cartoon, it was originally supposed to be live. We had some problems - my children were kidnapped during that time, and it just changed my whole way of thinking, from being in show business and everything else. I regret to this day, sometimes, that my children didn't get to be as famous and as popular...but God always knows best. He knows what He's doing, and sometimes we project what we can't see, but only God knows what's going to happen, and He knows the best. For all of us."
Burke stayed in the 1970s radar with albums on Dunhill, Chess, and Infinity, and when the eighties rolled around, nostalgia for 1960s soul did too. Burke was on top of it with an acclaimed 1984 live album on Rounder, Soul Alive. According to Burke, he played the unissued tape for noted author/historian Peter Guralnick in a Boston restaurant. Peter's reaction: "My God, man!" Burke picks up the story: "He called these guys (from Rounder Records) and they came over (to the restaurant). We played the tape in the Chinese restaurant! Made the deal in the Chinese restaurant! I walked out of the Chinese restaurant with a fat check, a record deal, and a box of shrimp egg foo yung!" Burke has been a constant presence ever since on the blues circuit, and was prominently featured in Gerri Hirshey's Nowhere To Run and Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music, two pivotal books about soul's golden age. Every few years, a new Solomon Burke record shows up in the racks. Most are worth getting, including the newest, Don't Give Up On Me, on the Fat Possum label.
It may look strange, a soul-singing evangelist on a label famous for pistol-packing Delta blues guys. No, they didn't record Solomon with overdriven guitars (ala T-Model Ford), or give him a dance-music remix behind his back (like R.L. Burnside). They pretty much left him alone, with a spare, low-key production job that doesn't try to keep up with anybody except Solomon Burke himself. Produced by Joe Henry, the new album contains songs from Henry, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, and Dan Penn, with a guest vocal turn from the Blind Boys of Alabama. I caught up with him via phone one recent morning, and the man is as multi-dimensional as his records, speaking with the clarity of Sir Lawrence Olivier one minute, dipping into Ebonics for effect in the next, and making solid sense both ways. Occasionally, his stories clash with history as we know it - Leonard Chess would have already been dead about six years when Solomon turned up on the Chess label in '75, so the only way Leonard could have welcomed Solomon to the company was at a seance. Still, to quote Guralnick from Sweet Soul Music, nobody tells a story quite like Solomon, so, in my own words, what's a little embellishment here and there? It was an honor to talk with one of the undisputed founding fathers of this thing called soul. Kick your shoes off, grab a pork chop sandwich and we'll let the King of Rock 'N' Soul take it from here:
THE EARLY YEARS/JOE LOUIS
SB: Apollo Records signed me for my gospel ability. They had Mahalia Jackson. They were the Atlantic Records of that era. They had Harry Belafonte. They had the Five Royales. They had everybody that was hot! (Apollo owner Bess Berman's) idea was, "let's take this church boy and make him the next Harry Belafonte." That was her idea. We wrote a song called "You Can Run But You Can't Hide" and we were sued by Mrs. (Joe) Louis because for some reason the Lord gave me this song called "You Can Run But You Can't Hide" from him. The record company says "okay, let's put writers with that and let's do it right 'cause it's a great song and Bess says 'let's go with it." We got out there and found out that hey, we couldn't do the song 'specially because Joe Louis owned the copyright! Listen to these words: copyright. She had copywritten every word her husband ever spoke! This was a brilliant woman! This was a great black woman.
JP: How was he as a person?
SB: Beautiful man. Very kind, very generous. You could see that he had been through a lot of things in his life that was very difficult. He was just an unbelievable athlete. A very, very proud black man, and part of a great heritage.
CROSSING OVER
SB: There was a young man (in the 1950's) named Roy Hamilton who was managed by Bill Cook. Immediately, Bill Cook had a record called "You'll Never Walk Alone" (by Roy Hamilton) and we had a record called "No Man Walks Alone." We were grooving, at that point, in the same direction, but remember, Roy Hamilton and myself were going into a path and a direction that had no programming. We were only being played by the Black disc jockeys because the songs were classified as "Black ballads." They really should have been classified as pop records. So we couldn't be on the pop charts. There was already one Marian Anderson, one Paul Robeson. Roy Hamilton did an amazing thing with his record "You'll Never Walk Alone" and he crossed over to the pop charts. Now remember, back in those days, we had two charts. We had one chart where you had to bubble over from (number) 200 (laughs)...you had to start on the Black charts, work your way up from 200 to 1. Then, after you made #1 on the Black charts, then they would give you a bullet - #90 on the Billboard (Pop) charts. So then when you work this way up, the record already been out like a year and a half. Let's go back to a group called the Falcons [featuring Solomon's running buddy Wilson Pickett-JP] who had one record called "I Found A Love" (in 1962) that stayed on the chart for what, four years? (laughs) But this was the game! This was the game of the record company! They could control the records, they could control the sales in your mind! Because they control the programming.
NAME FIVE...
LESSONS SOLOMON BURKE LEARNED FROM HIS DAYS ON ATLANTIC RECORDS
1. When I write my songs, don't give them away to people
2. Don't let people convince me that my music is bad
3. I should have my own publishing companies
4. I didn't need to depend on the record company to publish my records
5. I didn't need to depend on the record company to be cowriters with me on my songs
HOLD ON, THERE'S THREE MORE...
6. I didn't need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I'd have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do
7. The deals that were made for Black artists at that time were not the deals that were made for white artists
8. Remember there is going to be a bright side somewhere - the secret is to survive and get through it, if not get caught up into the webs of drugs and alcoholism and going off the deep end trying to wipe somebody out. The secret was to just be cool, stay in God's graces, and work it out.
SOUL CLAN
SB: The idea, the dream was really to be a great political movement for us and an educational movement as far as teaching ourselves and teaching our families how to develop themselves financially and to buy property all through the South and develop restaurants and schools, things like that - we had all kinds of great dreams that were wonderful that we were gonna do together as a group. We were working towards it very well. And then we lost Otis. When we did present our plan to the record company, they thought we were totally out of our minds, and I think that was a record that kinda silenced me immediately, as someone who wants to start something that they shouldn't. If it had been another time and another era, if we had the right people behind us at the time, we could have done it. It could have been done. The record was stopped and banned. We were using the record as a tool to invest money into real estate all through the South, because we were living in an era where the South was changing. We could see that there was gonna be people like McDonald's coming, and a Kentucky Fried Chicken was gonna be coming, and that Mom's Hamburgers and Big Bill's Bar-B-Q Ribs weren't going to survive. If we could buy these properties and then invest in the Black community, with our own McDonald's, with our own Kentucky Fried Chickens, it was gonna be a great move. We were TOTALLY ahead of our time! TOTALLY ahead of our time! But we didn't have the financial structure, like the right attorneys, the right managers, the right accountants, and we were going against the grain of what black entertainers is supposed to do. We were all just supposed to go out and buy red Cadillacs. We weren't supposed to go out and start talking about spending millions of dollars on building and developing. We weren't supposed to be talking about "we're gonna put 25 million dollars away." We weren't supposed to talk about that. We were supposed to talk about having parties and good times and eatin' barbecue ribs. You know, pork chops.
SOULFUL PROTEST
JP: On your own, away from the Soul Clan, you did one of your most explicitly political songs, "I Wish I Knew."
SB: Nina Simone. I heard Nina Simone sing that song and to me...(pause)...wow, she has always taken my breath away as a performer and as an artist. (Longer pause) Notice when I say "she takes my breath away" I stopped talking. (laughs) She's such a dynamic person. Her personality is unbelievable. She takes her European audience, who is totally white, and she's having them singing "Young, Gifted & Black"...she's so commanding and so dynamic - it's gotta do something. Here's a woman that nobody even talks about, the things that she's doing, and the things she has done. (When I recorded "I Wish I Knew," the powers that be said) "Stop preachin', man!" "What are you preachin' for? Sing!"
JP: A few years before that, you did Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm."
SB: Hel-LO! TOTAL political! "What are you doing?" You think they're gonna let that be a hit? No, no way...
JP: Atlantic went and put that on the B-side (of "Tonight's The Night" in 1965)!
SB: HEL-LO! (laughs) There you go! This is what was happening at that time...me already being a minister, all I needed was a little push in that direction and that woud've brought greater attention to what we were doing. So I became one of the behind-the-scenes guys - "Hey, you got my support, here's my money!" I'll be where I need to be! At the right time!" And that was it. I didn't do the marching down the streets, jumping in front of the lines and holding hands...that wasn't me. I was there when nobody else was there. I was in the towns before they got there and after they left. When the REAL problems existed. How wonderful it was to be part of that era, to even have known a Martin Luther King or a Ralph Abernathy and all of those people, and to see them come through these cities and do the things that they did, to go through the trials and tribulations and torments that they went through...this was an unbelievable time. Our kids today have no idea - no idea! -when they walk into a restaurant or when they drive through the driveway of McDonalds or Burger King and the voice says, “May I help you?” You know (laughs), they recognize it’s a brother or a sister! It doesn’t even faze you!
SONGS I'VE TURNED DOWN, AND SONGS I ACTUALLY DID
SB: (Producer/songwriter) Bert Berns gave me a song called "Hang On Sloopy" that I didn't do. Why would I have to sing a song about a dog? (laughs) I rebelled, once again, couldn't do that! Here I am, a Black artist rebelling against the record company and the great writers. They punished me for that! They turned around and gave me a song called "A Little Bit Of Soap," which I wouldn't do again. I'm not gonna go out there and sing to my audience that they need some soap! (laughs) 'Cause I'm Black, and I know at times, you know, people get funky! But I'm not gonna go out there and say "y'all need just a little bit of soap to wash away---" Wash away WHAT? When you play some of the clubs I've played, someone will pull out a .45 and say "YOU INSULTED ME!" (laughs) So I left that alone! But when they brought me "Cry To Me," I loved it. I thought it was a great song, the only problem was at that time it was too slow. [In 1963, Betty Harris actually had a hit with the slowed-down version that Solomon turned down.-JP] I brought my band in, and we did a fast version of it. That's the "Cry To Me" that we have today.
ROLLIN' ON THE RIVER
SB: We went to Bell Records (in 1969) after leaving Atlantic, and at that time, my producer and partner Tamiko Jones and I, we went to Muscle Shoals, AL - they said "do anything you want." Just bring us back a Solomon Burke album. We did the album, came back, presented them with the album. The guys went crazy. "What is your problem? How could you cover a song that's #3 on the charts in the nation? How can you cover Creedence Clearwater, you out of your mind? We don't even wanna talk to you about another album. Just - here, take your check..." We said, okay, that's it, let's just forget about it. If the album is that bad to you, don't worry about it. So we were walking out the door, and the guy says, "we don't have any photos of you," so Tamiko says "Solomon. Stop. Here's a camera. in my pocketbook. Hold on." Took a picture, so on the back of the album [For which "Proud Mary" composer John Fogerty wrote the liner notes. – JP] you see a picture of me standing by the wall
JP: So its like, who's right here? The record company was wrong on all counts! You had a hit...
SB: "Proud Mary" was a great song, and NO Black stations were playing it. None. Not one. It was not an insult to Black people. A lot of jocks I talked to said, "You know, this just doesn't fit into the format!" I said, "Well, maybe it's because nobody understands what the Proud Mary is all about." So when you listen to it, I tell the history of what the Proud Mary is really all about! It was a great Black slave ship, it was a great Black gambling ship, that people gambled on, which they're doing today, all over again, history's repeating itself. It was one of the greatest ships because it had all Black people...workers and cooks and everybody was Black...the best food, the best gambling, the best everything. That's why everybody wanted to be on the Proud Mary. So, when we talked about it, then the jocks began to play it. Then they became proud of it. It was too late, we were gone (from Bell). I was signed to MGM. I was in Vegas for sixteen weeks at the Sands Hotel. I missed this record being a hit, because we weren’t there to promote the record, we had no backing. The greatest thing I ever did was tell Ike Turner, “Hey man, you should get on this record…I think you and Tina could tear this thing up.”
JP: And you altered a lyric on your version (from "people on the river are happy to give" to "people on the river are laughin' & funnin'")
SB: They would always be laffin' - "yeah, thank you so much for this $500 tip!" You had a lot of rich Blacks back in those days because those people came off those boats and bought their grandfather's land back.
JP: Now when exactly was this?
SB: You know, back in "those days," back when boats were all popular...
THE MGM YEARS
JP: What was it like working for Lt. Governor of California Mike Curb [conservative politician who ran MGM during Burke's time there]?
SB: At that time, you gotta understand, Mike Curb had just gotten into the business. My manager was Buddy Glee, who put me together with Mike Curb, and was basically the idea to bring some soul to the label and bring something different to the label besides the Hank Williams situation. Mike came in with an idea which was very clean and very wonderful at that time - he didn't want any drugs involved with any of the artists. He let go one of the greatest groups he had at that time, Eric Burdon & War. He wanted MGM to be just a straight, clean-cut label, and that's what he tried to do.
JP: When Mike Curb backed Richard Nixon for the Presidency (in 1972), you and several other MGM artists were closely involved with that...
SB: I believed in the President and what he was doing at the time. Sometimes its controversy, but we all have our choices that we make. That was my choice at that time, and I still say Nixon was a great president. A very beautiful and wise man.
SAM THE MAN
JP: When you were on MGM, did you get to hang out with Sammy Davis, Jr.?
SB: I hung out with everybody! (laughs)
JP: Were you there when Sammy hugged Nixon?
SB: What happened, it was his excitement. He had just gotten off his yacht, and he had been close to the President prior to that. So it wasn't like, "HEY! Don't touch me!" or something like that. It was just the idea that the Secret Service wasn't prepared for him to greet the President at that moment. And Sammy Davis, Jr., he don't care about the Secret Service, the only person he's 'fraid about is God! So he just walked up - "HEY! LET ME TAKE A PICTURE!" (laughs) That wasn't a cool thing to do! I didn't know they had Secret Service in the water, man! They carried him away very quickly - you gotta understand, he jumped right in front and was, like, gonna take a picture with him! Like, I'm gonna click this picture! In your mind, if you were a Secret Service agent, you didn't know if it was a camera or a gun or what. It was just Sammy Davis, Jr. He was trying to be nobody else but himself. But it was a scary moment (laughs)! I'll always remember that incident because we were all standing there waiting for Sammy Davis, Jr. to come, and the President’s yacht was sitting there, and then Sammy’s SHIP came! (laughs) The SHIP came, and they had to move the President’s boat! These are legends that’ll never be forgotten…you know (sigh), what else can you say about a Sammy Davis, Jr. except that he was one of the greatest Black entertainers in the world. He left a mark and a pathway for a lot of other entertainers to follow. The mark of his greatness has not been picked up.
CHESS RECORDS
SB: Chess was one of the great labels of the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, and I was really just blown away when Leonard Chess says, "Man, we wanna do an album with you, let's do it," and I was excited about that. Then we went with Joe & Sylvia Robinson (then of All Platinum Records) in New Jersey, who continued the Chess label. Gosh, I strongly believed in Joe & Sylvia Robinson. Of course, you know they were the first ones to bring rap to the music world (via their later label, Sugarhill).
JP: There was one song you did, "I'll Never Stop Loving You," where you gave out the number of All Platinum Records right there on the record!
SB: I remember very well Mrs. Robinson calling me, saying "Do you know that you've given out the phone number to the record company?" She was very calm about it - "and now we have to have two more operators! So I'm gonna transfer all these calls to you!" I said "Well, thank you so much, Mrs. Robinson." She called me like at 11:00 at night! It was just tying up their lines, so they gave me a direct line. It was funny. It was very comical. Nobody knew I did that until after the record was over! Leonard Chess passed, and that was the end of the Chess label for that time. Of course, Mr. & Mrs. Robinson tried to take over as much as they could.
OLDIES BUT GOODIES
SB: The labels that were calling me (before Fat Possum showed up) were calling me saying, "Solomon Burke! Let's do another 'Cry To Me!' Let's do another 'Everybody Needs Somebody!' And how would you like to go out and do one of the good ol' oldie-but-goodie shows!"
JP: Did you ever do one of those shows?
SB: No, I didn't...
JP: Good for you!
SB: ...because I was successful and I know I'm good! I don't need nobody to put a title on top of me telling me how old I am & how good I am! So I just didn't do the oldie-but-goodie shows 'cause that is goin' back to: "Why dontcha dance for me before you go out there & eat! And have a bucket of wings while you're out there!"
JP: In other words, it's like a plantation mentality.
SB: It certainly is. (laughs) A lot of people say, "Solomon, you could make a fortune!" I don't need to make a fortune, I need to survive. I need to pay my bills, which we all have bills, and I need to do the things that I'm doing and keep doing what I'm doing.
JP: But you gotta do it with integrity.
SB: You gotta do it with class and integrity. If not, you're gonna drag yourself through the mud. Once you go through the mud, you drop into the pits of hell. It's hard to get up.
JP: Like Ricky Nelson sang, "If memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck".[NOTE: I know this is one of the biggest cliches going, but it seemed appropriate when he brought up the "oldie-but-goodie" tag.-JP]
SB: Hel-LO! And look where Ricky Nelson was! That was some strong words coming from a white young man. It also was a lesson for a lot of us to learn. So this is what I'd done all these years - when people say, "what have you been doin'?" I say well, I've been surviving and I've been doing what the Lord tells me to do.
THE NEW ALBUM ON FAT POSSUM
JP: Was it your idea to have such a stripped-down feel on your new album?
SB: No, that was totally an idea from Andy Culkin (president of Epitaph, which distributes Fat Possum). This was his idea of doing the album, and I thought it was a great idea, so let's try it. There were no other labels calling Solomon Burke saying, "Hey, I got an idea." I met with Andy a couple of times for breakfast - at our favorite place, Sollie's Deli - we had our lox, eggs and bagels and did our thing and talked. He said, "Here's my idea. If I could get some of the greatest writers and greatest performers in the world to write you some songs..." I'm looking at this guy and saying "Okay, keep talking, it's gonna be a good check" (laughs). He says, "What do you think about that?" I says, "Great, man..." "Guys like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson..." I says, "Yeah, poor guy" (laughs) He doesn't realize that all these people are no longer here! (laughs) So I'm sayin', "Keep on talkin', Andy!" (He said) "You don't know my label, we got a little label called Epitaph..." "Well, it sounds good to me; I'm an undertaker! Epitaph kind of works! Keep talkin’!” (laughs) He says, “Give me some time.” I said, “Sure, you got a year, knock yourself out!” (laughs) So we had another meeting, came in that morning – Sunday morning, I had to go to church, we had to do it real quick…had an early breakfast, opened up the envelope, he said, “You agree and I agree and that’s good enough for me, here’s the check…as of today, we’ve got X amount of time to put it together for you.” I said, “Man, beautiful! We'll know by Monday if you're real, when this check cashes! (laughs) So I prayed on it, went on to church, forgot about it, and was laffin' the whole week! 'Cause I said, "Let me see how many famous artists HE'S gon' find to write ME some songs! This gon' be a joke! Sam Cooke is gone, Jackie Wilson's gone (laughs), I know WILSON ain't gonna be writin' no songs for next week until I call him! And this guy called me back three weeks later, says: "I think I got some songs..." I says, "Yeah, by who?" "Let me show you what I got." He was a really cool guy - no suit, no tie...he had Carole King, he had Bob Dylan..."I tell you what, man, if you got all these people together, you pick the songs. You pick 'em, I don't wanna see the songs - it's too many great names there for me to go picking names out. I don't wanna do that. Just pick the songs you wanna do, and give 'em to me, tell me where the studio is, I'll show up, and we'll do 'em in four days." I'm very proud to do these artists' songs. It's an honor. These artists have given me a gift, and they're saying you take these gifts & you wrap 'em any way you want to...give 'em back to the people out there that we love and the people that you love. However you wrap it, we're with it. And that's what I've done.
FINAL WORDS FOR ROCTOBER READERS
JP: Can readers of Roctober still buy Solomon's Magic Popcorn?
SB: If you need it, you certainly can order it. PO Box 2044, Beverly Hills, CA 90213.