Search - Percy Sledge :: Best of

DEEP SOUL, COUNTRY SOUL

Pieter | Johannesburg | 04/30/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This collection includes at least three of Percy Sledge's ageless classics, songs that reached the top 5 way back in the 1960s but have often been revived and used in movie soundtracks or advertisements. These are the eternal When A Man Loves A Woman, the mournful Take Time To Know Her and the gospely My Special Prayer. Sledge's sound is a unique marriage of deep soul and country, made even more distinctive by his pleading voice with its spiritual undertones. Other great tracks here include Warm And Tender Love, Dark End Of The Street, It Tears Me Up and You're All Around Me, all melodic and moving numbers demonstrating the prowess of the Muscle Shoals musicians. This Best Of album is a good introduction to Sledge, but people who are really into deep soul are advised to investigate further as Sledge was a prolific artist and there are many more, lesser known, but equally excellent tracks available on other albums. Together with a couple of legendary artists on the Stax/Volt label, Sledge was the best exponent of this gripping type of country-soul, and his voice gave him the edge!"

Look, there's more to Percy Sledge than "When A Man Loves A

A. Pack | Portland, OR | 07/10/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"...and this album more than proves it...just listen to the deep country soul of My Special Prayer, or the hurtful cry of a love lost in Sudden Stop, or the hip rocking soul of Baby, Help Me (written by Bobby Womack by the way). After listening to these and some of the other track on this album, you begin to forget about When A Man Loves a Woman...

Most audiences are so hung up on this number one tune, I think they're missing out on the most versatile sounds of a true country-soul legend..."

Heart of Southern Soul

Stephanie DePue | Carolina Beach, NC USA | 03/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Percy Sledge's career began in 1966: he himself says it came out of the clear blue sky. The man just stood sorrowfully on stage and stumbled through "When a Man Loves a Woman."(He'd just been laid off his job in construction and his girlfriend at the time left him for a modeling career.) As he was later backed by Atlantic's gritty studio musicians, headquartered in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, he produced a yearning, deep southern, churchy sound on this soon-to-be famous song: and Atlantic's first No. 1 hit. The song has never died, is frequently revived and covered, and has been used on movie soundtracks and in advertising. It was followed by other hits, all with that gospel, soulful sound: "Take Time to Know Her," "Warm and Tender Love," and "It Tears Me Up," all of which are on this disk.



The Alabama-born Sledge has always had a way of locating the emotional heart of a song; noted rock critic Dave Marsh once said his soul ballads were "emotional classics for romantics of all ages." The current album opens with "When a Man," and continues with his other earliest hits. It's also notable for a particularly country-oriented "My Special Prayer," that to me seems to have a bit of a Tex/Mex sound. Sledge then gives us rather subdued covers of Aaron Neville's "Tell It like It Is," and two tunes from the Otis Redding songbook, "Try a Little Tenderness"and"I've Been Loving You Too Long."



I saw him a few years ago, in an open air concert at New York's Lincoln Center, and, I must say, it was rather a sad evening: the man appeared to have lost his top notes. His voice cracked and slid, again and again, on "Me and Mrs. Jones," and "At the Dark End of the Street." The audience kept calling for "When a Man," and he closed with it; but it was not a rendition you'd want to hear. Seemed to me at the time, and still, that rather than disappointing audiences and possibly harming his touring opportunities, the man would do better to take a page from the notebook of the immortal Ray Charles. When Charles lost the top notes of "Georgia on My Mind," he just had new arrangements made: arrangements that left those troublesome notes to the flute, or the Raelettes. Or Sledge could leave the song to Michael Bolton - he's said not to mind the Bolton take, and I can see why. However, Sledge's initial take of "When a Man" is here on this cd, in all its unearthly, undying glory.

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