CHARLES BRADLEY & HIS EXTRAORDINAIRES with the JAY VONS at Kool Haus (132 Queens Quay), tonight (Thursday, December 12), 8 pm, all ages. $25.50. RT, SS, TF.
Charles Bradley’s speaking voice is scratchy, raw and wrought with emotion – joy, sadness, despair, love. Sometimes it sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. He can’t fake it or stem it, and he can’t be anything other than himself. This comes through both in the moving 2012 documentary about his life, Soul Of America, and when I reach him in Brooklyn.
“Looking back at my past, there’s nothing but hell behind me,” he says.
“But I’ve got to show the love that I have in me. I want a chance to reach out to the world. I’ve always been an honest and decent person. All I want is to try to make something out of myself. It hasn’t been an easy road and it’s still not an easy road, but I’m still fighting.”
The 65-year-old’s relentless drive is also a practical necessity. Beneath the keep-on-keeping-on spirit that imbues every sentence, he sounds stressed. He’s just come back from Europe to find that his mother, whom he lives with, hasn’t been sufficiently taken care of in his absence. She’s in her 90s, and Bradley is her caretaker.
“I’ve got to continue my career,” he says. “There’s too much load on me.”
He’s on his way to the hospital to meet with her doctor as we speak, and is an open book along the way.
His story goes like this: He grew up in Florida and then New York with his mother. At 14, he moved out, roamed the streets and ended up in the Job Corps, which he credits with saving his life. After decades of poverty, bad luck and odd jobs, he became a James Brown impersonator in New York City clubs, where he was discovered by Daptone Records co-founder Gabriel Roth.
He released his first album, the purist soul throwback No Time For Dreaming, in 2011 at age 63. Victim Of Love followed in 2013. They were successful, and he’s been touring. A lot.
When he sings live – like at his Phoenix show in Toronto last May – he pours himself into his songs, and people respond to his genuineness, queuing up to meet him afterward and often pouring their hearts out to him.
It’s hard to believe there’s anything left in his tank.
But Bradley says there’s a level he hasn’t reached yet. “I want to go really deep in my soul and really open up, but then I lose the band,” he explains.
“The guys are extraordinary and beautiful and eager to learn, but the things they’ve got to learn come through [life]. They’re not at that level. When I really get the guts to start going into my deepness, I lose them.”
For his third album, he’ll continue to work with producer and backing band member Tom Brenneck, who helps coax out Bradley’s improvised, autobiographical lyrics.
Bradley says he has unlimited stories to tell. He hasn’t yet found happiness, but genuinely loves his fans and performing.
“I’ll do my best to keep going, to keep giving out the love and honesty from my soul to the world.
“Cuz I know one thing: when I leave this world, I ain’t going to need this body no more. So I can give it to ’em while I’m living and let the world know that Charles Bradley is giving you the love from his soul. Then I’ll be sure that I did my job.”
julial@nowtoronto.com | @julialeconte
