Percy Sledge Passes

[Thomas Promise]

Percy Sledge, Who Sang 'When A Man Loves a Woman,' dies. He was 73. Sledge's first recording took him from hospital orderly to a long touring career averaging 100 performances a year and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.

 

 

[warpedbored]

I was just going to post about this but Tom beat me to it. "When A Man Loves A Woman" is one of the greatest soul songs of all time. The lyrics are so true.

[Doug]

Yes, he was loved and will be missed. I heard he wrote the song from a life experience of a woman leaving him for another man... Blues Baby, the blues....

[amberjack1234]

The ole boy was one of my favorites. I listen to When A Man Loves A Woman often. I read that out of all the millions of dollars that the song brought in he got almost nothing out of it. He gave it gave it away but he wasn't bitter about it. He said that it would have helped his children but if it helped the ones that he gave it to he was good with it. He died with Hospic taking care of him.

 

According to Sledge, the song's inspiration came when his girlfriend left him for a modelling career after he was laid off from a construction job in late 1965,^[6] and, because bassist Calvin Lewis and organist Andrew Wright helped him with the song, he gave all the songwriting credits to them.^[7] It reached No. 1 in the U.S. and went on to become an international hit.

 

What a shame.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Sledge

 

Another African-American that got screwed was Little Eva. She died penniless in a town about 35 miles from where I live and was buried in an obscure overgrown cemetery until a group found it and cleared it up and put her a decent headstone there for her.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eva