adminPERCY Sledge, the R&B singer whose soulful ballad of eternal love and rejection, When a Man Loves a Woman, topped the charts in 1966, died on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, Los Angeles. He was 74. His agent and manager, Mark Lyman, said the artiste died of liver cancer, for which he had undergone surgery last year.
Sledge, sometimes called the King of Slow Soul, was a sentimental crooner and one of the first soul stars, having risen to fame from jobs picking cotton and working as a hospital orderly while performing at clubs and colleges on weekends.
“I was singing every style of music: the Beatles, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Motown, Sam Cooke, the Platters,” he once said.
When a Man Loves a Woman was his first recording for Atlantic Records, after a patient at the hospital introduced him to the record producer Quin Ivy.
“It topped the pop charts in 1966 and sold more than a million copies, becoming the label’s first gold record. Raw and lovelorn, the song was a response to a woman who had left him for another man, Sledge said.
He called its composition a “miracle.”
An album of the same name was released that year, and three more studio albums for Atlantic followed in the 1960s: Warm and Tender Soul, The Percy Sledge Way and Take Time to Know Her.
Although the song, When a man loves a woman which ranks 53rd on Rolling Stones’ list of the 500 greatest of all time, is credited to two of Sledge’s early bandmates, the bassist Calvin Lewis and the organist Andrew Wright, who assisted with the arrangement. Sledge said of the melody, “I hummed it all my life, even when I was picking and chopping cotton in the fields.”
Still, because he was not listed as a co-writer, Sledge never received royalties for When a Man Loves a Woman in any of its forms. “Worst decision I ever made. But I’m not at all bitter,” he told Blues and Soul magazine, noting that he was only 25 at the time.
“It’s God’s will for me to give it to them. But if I had my time again, I wouldn’t do it. Because of my children.”
Sledge is survived by wife, Rosa Le and 12 children. His admirers in the industry included Billy Joel, James Taylor, Bo Diddley and the E Street Band’s Steven Van Zandt, who enlisted Sledge to perform When a Man Loves a Woman at his wedding in 1982. — NyTimes
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