Wilson Pickett: Wilson Pickett, the Alabama-born soul singer who brought a raw groove and growling energy to 1960s rhythm and blues music with hits such as In the Midnight Hour and Mustang Sally, died on Thursday. He was 64.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member died at a hospital near his Reston, Virginia, home after suffering a heart attack.
Chris Tuthill, of the management company Talent Source, said Pickett had suffered health problems in the past year. His career spanned four decades. Before slowing down in 2005, he continued to perform, earning a Grammy nomination for the 1999 album, It's Harder Now. The album also received three WC Handy Awards, the genre trophy for blues and soul recordings.
Despite his longevity as a recording artist, his career was truly defined by his raspy, forceful delivery on a run of 1960s R&B hits, among them Land of 1,000 Dances, Funky Broadway and the telephonically titled 634-5789. The singer was nicknamed "the Wicked Pickett" for his gruff power.
No recording captured that intensity more famously than the 1966 hit Mustang Sally, released by Atlantic Records. That song and In the Midnight Hour were touchstone hits for young 1960s music fans. The songs were revived by the 1991 Alan Parker film The Commitments and its hit soundtrack.
The film's plot is about a scruffy collection of young Irish musicians and their attempt to meet and perform with their hero. Pickett never actually appears in that film (he did show up in two less celebrated movies, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1978 and Blues Brothers 2000), but he tapped into the film's spirit by performing at its Los Angeles and New York premieres.
Pickett was born on March 18th, 1941, in Prattville, Alabama. His earliest music experience was in Baptist church choirs. His home life, as the youngest of 11 children, was less uplifting. "The baddest woman in my book . . . my mother," the singer told author Gerri Hirshey for the book Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music. "I get scared of her now. She used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood . . . (one time I ran away and) cried for a week. Stayed in the woods, me and my little dog."
He got another beating when his preacher grandfather caught him with a copy of Louis Jordan's raucous but tame hit, Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens.
Eventually, as a teenager he went north to live with his father in Detroit. There, during the 1950s, Pickett performed with gospel harmony group the Violinaires. By the end of the decade he was pushing into secular sounds, as were many of his contemporaries who had brought southern church sounds north but were ready to revamp them.
In 1959 Pickett became a member of the Falcons, along with future Memphis soul notables Joe Stubbs, Sir Mack Rice and Eddie Floyd. The Falcons hit, I Found a Love, helped land Pickett a deal with Atlantic Records, where he hooked up with producer Jerry Wexler. Wexler would be a guiding hand during the 1965 sessions for Stax Records that included the recording of In the Midnight Hour.
Wexler, whose career included famous sessions with Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and Dusty Springfield, said those Pickett tapings were easily among the most memorable moments.
"There was something about those records and Wilson's voice. Those were some of the funkiest, deepest-grooving, in-the-pocket recordings I ever heard," he said this week. "The thing about Wilson was he was just a great screamer, but he did it with control. James Brown would scream and it was a scream, but Wilson could scream notes. His voice was powerful, but it wasn't out of his control - it was always melodic."
Wexler described Pickett as a "black panther" before the term took on a political connotation. The nickname spoke to Pickett's glower and confidence, the same attributes that may have hindered his career.
Steve Cropper, the guitarist of Booker T and the MGs and a key sideman in the soul explosion of the 1960s, co-wrote In the Midnight Hour with Pickett. He said on Thursday that the same passion that made magic on vinyl could rub people raw in person - one of the reasons that Pickett's career never earned the acclaim showered on smoother singers such as Al Green and Sam Cooke or the fiery but charismatic Otis Redding.
" could be difficult and he didn't really reach out to people. It wasn't like Otis - if you met Otis, he was your best friend on the spot . . . Wilson was more distant and sometimes he had that angry-at-the-world attitude. But if you got in a studio, he was amazing. Just amazing."
Pickett is survived by two sons, Lynderrick and Michael, and two daughters, Veda and Saphan. He will be interred with his mother, Lena, in Louisville, Kentucky.
Wilson Pickett, born March 18th, 1941; died January 19th, 2006