{"id":81,"date":"2006-01-20T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-21T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=81"},"modified":"2006-01-20T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-21T06:00:00","slug":"past-the-midnight-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/past-the-midnight-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"Past the Midnight Hour"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
<\/span><\/div>\n
Let it R.I.P., Wilson Pickett<\/p>\n

<\/span>First met & instantly danced to on the jukebox at Adolf\u2019s Down-the-Road, Annandale-on-Hudson, fall \u201967.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Aretha Franklin paid tribute to Pickett, calling him \u201cone of the greatest soul singers of all time.He will absolutely be missed. I am thankful that I got the chance to speak to him not too long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soul singer Solomon Burke: \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a giant, we\u2019ve lost a legend, we\u2019ve lost a man who created his own charisma and made it work around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did his part. It was a great ride, a great trip,\u201d his son Michael Wilson Pickett said.<\/p>\n

<\/span>
<\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Grits and Gospel: The Sublime Mix Of Wilson Pickett<\/span>
<\/span>By Richard Harrington<\/span>
<\/span>Washington Post Staff Writer<\/span>
<\/span>Saturday, January 21, 2006; C01<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Wilson Pickett was a man and a half, the all-night groover at his best in a midnight hour that was not just a time but also a place and a promise.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cI\u2019m gonna wait till the midnight hour\/that\u2019s when my love comes tumblin\u2019 down ,\u201d Pickett sang with gruff insistence, melding the gospel urgency of his youth with a decidedly secular sexual swagger.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cIn the Midnight Hour\u201d was the first in a string of \u201960s classics that included \u201cMustang Sally,\u201d \u201c634-5789,\u201d \u201cFunky Broadway\u201d and \u201cLand of 1000 Dances,\u201d cornerstones of Southern soul and mainstays for any rock or soul band looking to tap into the particular jubilation that Pickett represented.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In a classic soul era largely defined by crooners and shouters, Pickett was a screamer, a throat-shredding force of nature who always seemed about to bust a gut or blow a gasket. He called what he did \u201cgrits music,\u201d and it could scald a listener or fire up a fan\u2019s imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cPickett could take one note and just squall that note, and do it all night long!\u201d remembers Sam Moore, of the legendary \u201960s duo Sam and Dave. He adds that \u201cwhen Pickett showed up on a show, you either had it together or you would get embarrassed and just walk off the stage. We had run-ins many times onstage where it was a war \u2014 and it was a good war.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Pickett, 64, died Thursday of a heart attack at a hospital near his home in Ashburn.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Music historian Peter Guralnick, author of an acclaimed new biography of Sam Cooke, said yesterday that Pickett was \u201ca prickly, irascible personality who had a great talent and who carried on and introduced the hard gospel style of Archie Brownlee and Julius Cheeks into the mainstream of popular music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Early on, Pickett described himself as \u201ca gospel singer singing blues material,\u201d and he seemed particularly beholden to Brownlee and Cheeks, lead singers of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and Sensational Nightingales, respectively. The screaming, the raw emotional delivery, the total command of the stage \u2014 all were common to gospel preachers and singers long before soul migrated out of rhythm and blues.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Pickett moved from small-town Alabama to Detroit in 1955. Moore remembers meeting him in 1957 when Pickett was lead singer of the Violinaires. \u201cWith that voice, you would never have thought that he would have gone into soul music, the secular side,\u201d Moore notes.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>But he did, joining a Detroit doo-wop group called the Falcons and making his first mark in 1962 as co-writer and lead singer on \u201cI Found a Love,\u201d an ecstatic ballad in which Pickett sang \u201csometimes I call her in the midnight hour.\u201d In gospel, a singer was more likely to \u201csee my Jesus in the midnight hour,\u201d but soul was built on the thin divide between sacred and secular sounds, with only the lyrics as signposts to which was which.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Pickett left the Falcons a couple years later, and after several false starts in Detroit and New York, he found his true voice by going home. He had signed with Atlantic Records, whose co-owner, Jerry Wexler, sensed that Pickett might benefit from hooking up with Memphis\u2019s Stax studio and its house band, Booker T and the MGs. Wexler didn\u2019t even have to wait until Pickett got to the studio, according to guitarist Steve Cropper.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Stax owner \u201cJim Stewart and I picked Wilson and Wexler up at the airport, and we went to a Holiday Inn to start working on stuff for the session,\u201d Cropper recalled yesterday. \u201cThey left and came back a couple of hours later and we played what we had.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Which was \u201cIn the Midnight Hour,\u201d on which Pickett and Cropper shared the songwriting credit.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cHe was dynamic \u2014 you had to tap your feet when Wilson Pickett was singing,\u201d Cropper added. \u201cAnd while there\u2019s a lot of soul singers that get that high screeching thing, when he did it, it was more like a note, an instrument, like a trumpet, not just a scream of excitement. . . . That was what separated Wilson from a lot of other singers and screamers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The Stax sound was rougher, rawer, dirtier than Motown, or even Atlantic. (\u201cThey let us breathe, let us do what we wanted to do,\u201d marvels Sam Moore.) Unfortunately, Pickett\u2019s Stax connection was severed when Stewart got into a tiff with Atlantic and banned all outside production.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Fortunately, Pickett landed in Muscle Shoals, Ala., at the equally legendary Fame Studios, where he worked with an equally adept studio band and found further success with \u201cLand of 1000 Dances,\u201d \u201cMustang Sally\u201d and \u201cFunky Broadway,\u201d among others. The mid-\u201960s was the golden era for Southern soul, thanks to Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex and others.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>All \u2014 except Redding, who
\n died in 1967 \u2014 suffered a similar fate in the \u201970s, fading as hitmakers, relegated to the oldies circuit or overseas tours. Pickett recorded for other labels \u2014 even Motown in the late \u201980s \u2014 but his most brilliant and most successful work, occurred in the seven years (1965-1972) that he was part of the Atlantic-Stax-Fame axis.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Pickett could be indifferent as a performer, ornery and difficult in his personal dealings, reckless in his behavior, as if he had a compulsion to live up to the \u201cWicked Pickett\u201d moniker bestowed on him in the wake of \u201cIn the Midnight Hour.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cAnyone who knew Wilson had to deal with both sides,\u201d says Steve Cropper.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>David Panzer, who leads the Washington-based Mustang Band and played guitar in Pickett\u2019s band for five years in the late \u201990s, says Pickett \u201cwas still doing all the songs in the [original] key, and he had the most incredible scream \u2014 and he could summon it up any time without even trying. It would probably kill anyone else to do it, yet for him it was effortless.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cWhen I first heard \u2018I Found a Voice,\u2019 I went \u2018Oh, boy ,\u2019 \u201d recalls Sam Moore. \u201cThere\u2019s no way you could not recognize Pickett\u2019s voice. It\u2019s not like today. You knew Sam Cooke\u2019s voice, you knew Otis Redding\u2019s voice, you knew Pickett\u2019s voice. You didn\u2019t have to go: \u2018Who\u2019s that singing?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cYou knew .\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u00a9 2006 The Washington Post Company<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Harrington (Western High School \u201967) gave short shrift to the Wilson Pickett \u201cIn Philadelphia\u201d lp. Lot of good stuff on that one.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let it R.I.P., Wilson Pickett First met & instantly danced to on the jukebox at Adolf\u2019s Down-the-Road, Annandale-on-Hudson, fall \u201967. Aretha Franklin paid tribute to Pickett, calling him \u201cone of the greatest soul singers...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}