Eagle of Soul Charles Bradley is back to his best

TWO years ago Charles Bradley released his debut album, No Time For Dreaming, at the grand age of 62, garnering great acclaim and a fanbase around the world.

Charles Bradley. Picture: Getty

Bradley is a proper old-school soul shouter, dubbed the Screaming Eagle of Soul. “I’ve got so much inside,” he says. “Sometimes I just gotta scream to get it out there.” But, however celebratory and cathartic his music, speaking to him is a sobering experience. It is clear that this man, who has lived a life of ups but mainly downs, takes nothing for granted.

When Bradley, the youngest of eight, was a baby, his mother moved to New York, leaving her kids in Florida with their grandmother. When she summoned her family eight years later, Bradley struggled with the transition. By his early teens, he was sleeping rough on subway trains.

His musical epiphany came at 14 when his sister took him to see James Brown at the Apollo. When friends noted his resemblance they plied him with gin and his sporadic career as a James Brown impersonator was launched.

Bradley spent the next 30 years doing odd jobs and modest gigs. In 1996, he returned to New York to be closer to his mother. He was still struggling to get his life on track when his brother Joseph was shot and killed.

His luck changed thanks to Daptone Records, the Brooklyn-based label responsible for the international careers of the brilliant but neglected soul singers Sharon Jones and Lee Fields, as well as providing the consummate horn section who played on Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black. Label boss Gabe Roth partnered him with producer/guitarist Thomas Brenneck of the Menahan Street Band and, after some false starts, the pair began to work on the songs which would become Bradley’s belated debut album.

You can feel Bradley’s pain when he sings. He is a true soul man in the tradition of Otis Redding. “I don’t want to go back to poverty, and I will fight to try to keep myself out of poverty,” he says.

“It took a long time to come and now that I got it, I got to take care of myself. There’s still a road to climb. For now I’m just taking one day at a time and trying to grow honestly and righteously.”

• Charles Bradley plays the ABC, Glasgow on Saturday.