Percy Sledge

• Born: November 25, 1941, Leighton, AL
• Active: '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Rhythm & Blues
• Instrument: Vocals
• Representative Albums: "It Tears Me Up: The Best of Percy Sledge," "When a Man Loves a Woman," "Very Best of Percy Sledge"
• Representative Songs: "When a Man Loves a Woman," "Warm and Tender Love," "Take Time to Know Her"

Biography

Percy Sledge will forever be associated with "When a Man Loves a Woman," a pleading, soulful ballad he sang with wrenching, convincing anguish and passion. Sledge sang all of his songs that way, delivering them in a powerful rush where he quickly changed from soulful belting to quavering, tearful pleas. It was a voice that made him one of the key figures of deep Southern soul during the late '60s. Sledge recorded at Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama, where he frequently sang songs written by Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn. Not only did he sing deep soul, but Sledge was among the pioneers of country-soul, singing songs by Charlie Rich and Kris Kristofferson in a gritty, passionate style. During the '70s, his commercial success quickly faded away, but Sledge continued to tour and record into the '90s.

While he worked as a hospital nurse in the early '60s, Sledge began his professional music career as a member of the Southern soul vocal group the Esquires Combo. On the advice of local disc jockey Quin Ivy, he went solo in 1966. Ivy fancied himself a record producer and he agreed to help shape Sledge's song "When a Man Loves a Woman" into a full-fledged single, hiring Spooner Oldham to play a distinctive, legato organ phrase. Ivy released the single independently and quickly licensed it to Atlantic Records, who quickly bought out Sledge's contract. "When a Man Loves a Woman" became a huge hit in the summer of 1966, topping both the pop and R&B charts. It was quickly followed that year by two Top Ten R&B hits, "Warm and Tender Love" and "It Tears Me Up," which were both in the vein of his first hit. Although few of his subsequent singles were hits -- only "Take Time to Know Her" reached the R&B Top Ten in 1968 -- many of the songs, which were often written by Dan Penn and/or Oldham, were acknowledged as classics among soul aficionados.

Despite his strong reputation among deep soul fans, Sledge's sales had declined considerably by the early '70s, and he headed out on the club circuit in America and England. In 1974, he left Atlantic for Capricorn Records, where he surprisingly returned to the R&B Top 20 with "I'll Be Your Everything." Instead of re-igniting his career, the single was a last gasp, as far as chart success was concerned. Over the next two decades he continued to tour, and in the late '80s, "When a Man Loves a Woman" experienced a resurgence in popularity, due to its inclusion in movie soundtracks and in television commercials. Following its appearance in a 1987 Levi commercial in the U.K., the single was re-released and climbed to number two. Two years later, he won the Rhythm and Blues Foundation's Career Achievement Award. Sledge was able to turn this revived popularity into a successful career by touring constantly, playing over 100 shows a year into the '90s. In 1994, he released Blue Night, his first collection of new material in over a decade, to uniformly positive reviews. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Greatest Hits [Metro] Buy this CD	Soulful Sound of Percy Sledge Buy this CD	When a Man Loves a Woman: Best of Percy Sledge [Aim] Buy this CD	Percy Sledge Way/Take Time to Know Her Buy this CD	When a Man Loves a Woman and Other Hits Buy this CD
When a Man Loves a Woman [Madacy 1997] Buy this CD	Essentials Buy this CD	When a Man Loves a Woman [Fabulous] Buy this CD	Golden Hits [Creative Sounds] Buy this CD	Percy Sledge [Direct Source] Buy this CD

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singer; soul musician

Personal Information

Born on November 25, 1940, in Leighton, AL; married Rosa; 12 children.

Career

Singer, 1966-.

Life's Work

Legendary soul singer Percy Sledge's career is often reduced to just one song. Sledge's 1966 hit, "When a Man Loves a Woman," carried the singer to stardom, and has kept him in the limelight ever since. "When a Man Loves a Woman" remains one of the most heavily played songs on the radio--estimates of its airplays range around five million. About 50 other artists have recorded their own versions of the ballad, and the song earned a Grammy award for pop crooner Michael Bolton in 1992. Though he enjoyed a number of lesser hits, including "Cover Me," "It Tears Me Up," "Warm and Tender Love," "Out of Left Field," "Take Time to Know Her," "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)," and "I'll Be Your Everything," "When a Man Loves a Woman" stands as the lone hit in Sledge's repertoire. Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times declared that Sledge sings the song "with such passion and conviction that the single stands as one of the defining records in American soul music."

Sledge was born on November 25, 1940 (some sources say 1941), in Leighton, Alabama. Like many successful soul singers, he grew up singing in church with his mother. He also was raised on a steady diet of country music. "The only radio station we got [in rural Alabama] was country music," Sledge said in a 1998 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "That's all I knew. We didn't hear rock 'n' roll but for about 15 minutes real late at night." Sledge absorbed the heartbreak of country music legends like Hank Williams, Jimmy Reed, and Marty Robbins, and it eventually influenced his own soulful style.

Wrote and Sang Hit Single

After singing in church and in bar bands, Sledge teamed up with record producers Quin Ivy and Marlin Greene in Sheffield, Alabama. Sledge was working as an orderly in a Sheffield hospital when he met Ivy. Sledge used to hum the bars of "When a Man Loves a Woman" while picking and chopping cotton near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, according to Madelyn Rosenberg of Virginia's Roanoke Times. The song was released on the Atlantic record label in 1966. Though Sledge helped write the song, which was originally titled "Why Did You Leave Me?," he gave writing credit to Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright, who were members of Sledge's five-man band, called the Esquires. When he agreed to give up the writing credit, Sledge later admitted, he had no idea how successful the song would be. "When a Man Loves a Woman" was not even Sledge's favorite song on his debut album. "I never did think the song would be anything," he told the Roanoke Times. "It was just something I made up."

The song went straight to number one on the charts, though it only remained there for two weeks. While Sledge has estimated that he has sung "When a Man Loves a Woman" thousands of times since he first recorded it, he admits that the original recording is timeless. "It will be forever, it's a masterpiece," Sledge said in an interview with the Australian Sunday Times. "It'll never be cut like that again. Not me, not anybody, will sing it like that again. Everything was perfect in that song." He also claims to never tire of singing the ballad after more than three decades. "It's a beautiful song," Sledge told the Los Angeles Daily News. "I could never get sick of it."

The single launched Sledge's career and sent him on his first national tour. Legend has it that, when he returned home after that first tour, Sledge checked into the hospital where he had worked so that his former coworkers could wait on him hand and foot. Two years after the song's release, Sledge sat in an Atlanta diner with blues legend B.B. King. Sledge told King that he would be happy if he could stretch his success out for another five years. According to Sledge in the Australian Sunday Times, King replied, "With the song you've got ... you're gonna last a lot longer than I have, because that song is going to keep going forever."

Strong Career Built on Past Fame

King was absolutely right. Though Sledge's career peaked with "When a Man Loves a Woman," and he never recaptured that level of popular success, he was able to cull together a career of live concert appearances and greatest hits albums that satisfied his fans' desire to walk down memory lane. The song was such a true hit, and though Sledge could ably sing a host of hits by other soul artists, "When a Man Loves a Woman" anchors his live shows. His fans are older now, but the song has stood the test of time. "They're grown up now with children and they never forgot me," Sledge told the Roanoke Times. "That makes me feel great. I know I did something and I thank God for that. I even cry sometimes when I think about it."

Though he released dozens of records of new material over the years, none of them was critically or popularly successful. He signed with the Capricorn record label in the mid-1970s and released the Top 20 hit "I'll Be Your Everything." The inclusion of "When a Man Loves a Woman," on the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's Academy Award-winning war film Platoon put the song back on the charts in 1987. It also enjoyed commercial airplay in a Levi's commercial. In 1989, the R&B Foundation presented Sledge with one of its first Career Achievement Awards for his lifelong contribution to R&B. He was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1993.

Blue Night, released in 1994, sparked another surge of renewed interest in the singer, and was lauded as the artist's "comeback album." London's Guardian music critic Adam Sweeting described the album as "likeable," and noted its "amazing cast" of guest musicians, which included Bobby Womack, Steve Cropper, and Mick Taylor, among others. London Independent critic Geoff Brown went a stretch further, writing that Blue Night was Sledge's "first uniformly good record in over two decades," noting the "bunch of sixties soul staples" featured on the album.

After a 1996 concert in London, Independent Sunday music critic Nicholas Barber wrote that Sledge's voice was "showing its age ... " Although it was "certainly not the nimble, expressive instrument" of Sledge's heyday, Barber continued, "it expands throughout the evening, and reveals subtleties that are more than a match for most other singers' voices--if not for his former self." During the show, which was the first of a six-night residency at London's Jazz Café, Sledge mostly sang from the repertoires of other soul legends, and the show suffered from a series of frustrating stops and starts by Sledge and his young band. "Sledge knows his limitations, and restricts himself almost entirely to tried and tested, steady, hymnal classics," according to Barber. He dedicated a revue of popular hits to Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, the Temptations, and Ben E. King, and then proceeded to croon their signature songs, including "My Girl," "At the Dark End of the Street," "In the Midnight Hour," "Stand By Me," "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay." But on his own signature song, "When a Man Loves a Woman," Sledge still shines. "On that," Barber wrote, "he hits the notes with such power, authority, and accuracy that they are left in no fit state to be sung by anyone else again." Sledge moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1996, and resides there with his wife, Rosa. He has 12 children and 14 grandchildren.

Awards

"When a Man Loves a Woman" named one of the "Best 100 Singles of the Last 25 Years" by Rolling Stone magazine, 1988; first recipient of Career Achievement Award, R & B Foundation, 1989; Most-Performed Song of the Year award, BMI, 1993; five gold records and two platinum records.

Works

Selected discography

• When a Man Loves a Woman, Atlantic, 1966.
• "Warm and Tender Love," Atlantic, 1966.
• "It Tears Me Up," Atlantic, 1966.
• "Out of Left Field," Atlantic, 1967.
• "Just Out of Reach," Atlantic, 1967.
• "Cover Me," Atlantic, 1967.
• "Take Time to Know Her," Atlantic, 1968.
• "I'll Be Your Everything," Capricorn, 1974.
• When a Man Loves a Woman (The Ultimate Collection), Atlantic, 1987.
• It Tears Me Up: The Best of Percy Sledge, Rhino, 1992.
• Blue Night, Sky Ranch/Virgin, 1994.
• Best of Percy Sledge, Atlantic.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Daily News (Los Angeles), May 30, 1995, p. L3.
• Guardian (London, England), January 16, 1996, p. 2.
• Independent (London, England), January 19, 1996, p. 10.
• Independent Sunday (London, England), January 21, 1996, p. 16.
• Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1998, p. 6.
• Roanoke Times (Virginia), October 22, 1999, p. 1.
• Sunday Times (Perth, Australia), March 30, 2003, p. S7.
• Times (London, England), August 28, 1997, p. 32.
• Washington Post, August 18, 2000, p. WW13.

On-line

• "Percy Sledge," Alabama Hall of Fame, www.alamhof.org/sledgep.htm (February 19, 2003).
• "Percy Sledge," All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com (February 19, 2003).
• "Percy Sledge," Artist Direct, http://imusic.artistdirect.com/showcase/urban/percysledge.html (February 19, 2003).
• "Percy Sledge," VH1, www.vh1.com (February 19, 2003).

— Brenna Sanchez

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