Charles Bradley: Soul of America Page #2

- # Bam, bam, bam, bam

- Bam, ba-a-am... #

Three, four.

THEY PLAY GENTLE INTRO

# In you

# I found love

# That makes me feel so real

# Oh, baby

# Sometimes

# When I'm sleeping at night

# I wake up

# And you're nowhere to be found

# You said you love me

# And you'll always be around

# In you... #

The new music, for once, it's me.

It's things that I have experienced, that I went through, heartaches and pains.

# I don't want to be a fool no more... #

- Yeah, Bradley, you waited twice for the horns.

- You told me that.

Yeah, that's perfect.

- Nine and a half...

- Mother, come on. You said nine, you said eight.

I get eight. Now you want nine, you want nine and a half.

What's wrong with those shoes right here?

INAUDIBLE REPLY:

You're going to drive me crazy.

Oh, Jesus...

It's hard sometimes. It's very hard because everything now is really depending on me.

But if I put her in a home, she would die and I know that.

And when...when my husband...

..died.

She said, "Son, let me spend my last days in the house."

I said, "OK, Mom. I'll do that."

But she don't know...

I have no life.

My life is her.

For me to be with someone,

I don't even know how to do it.

When Charles' mother first left Florida to go to new York,

Charles was only eight months of age.

Eight months old.

And she stayed away so long that when she came back for the first time,

he didn't recognise her, he didn't know she was his mother.

He thought that his grandmother really was his mother.

She abandoned, actually, in a way, her children

to follow...

..a man who had a wife

that she was very crazy about.

Otherwise, she probably would never have gone to New York.

I was about the age of seven or eight years old.

My mother told my grandmother, "I want him to come back to New York with me."

My grandmother said, "No, let them stay here. They'll get a better education if they stay with me."

So my mother says, "No."

My grandmother says, "You're not taking them," so my mother stole us.

That's what I did.

I really hate to say this, but I think at that time,

it was hard to find jobs,

so there was only one way if you had some kind of dependents

that you can get some welfare.

And I feel like that's what she was doing to get the welfare

by having those kids there.

During his infancy,

now, he was the favourite child.

He received all the love and care from his older brothers and sisters and his grandmother

and his uncles and all of us because he was the baby.

When Charles went to New York, that's when he lost all of that.

I was living with my mom and I was afraid she would hurt me, so I left.

We couldn't see eye to eye. I was getting blamed for everything.

I was very bitter. It seemed like everything was rationed to us.

I was in a basement worse than this one.

You know, it was this sand basement. It was no concrete basement.

A 15-watt bulb of light and I said, "No, I can't take this."

I said, "I don't want it, I'm going." So I left.

I was 14 years old.

My home was the subway train. That's where I'd keep warm.

I'd get on the subway train some nights, winter nights, cold, riding the A-Train back up and down.

The police would hit the darn thing real hard and say, "Kids, you got to get off."

I'd go across the platform and get another train going back.

I'd sleep, get me a little corner.

I'd get the stick real hard and it'd penetrate through my head.

He'd say, "Get up. You can't sleep here."

So, I'd just keep going different routes

to get a night's sleep before daylight come.

And I'd see myself what's going down

because everybody in those days was getting high using hard drugs.

I'd be watching while they're shooting up and they'd try to give it to me.

I got scared and I was afraid of needles. I'd say, "No, no, no."

That's when I went to Job Corps. I tried to get my mother to sign me to go to Job Corps.

She was mad with me, she wouldn't sign, so I got my sister to forge her name.

I learned to cook. For two years, I was a cook trainee up in Bar Harbor, Maine.

That's when I started doing James Brown on the Job Corps.

They'd say, "Man, you see that new guy that came in?

"He looked just like that guy they call James Brown."

And then they got me fired up one day. They gave me some gin.

In the Job Corps, you were sneaky.

They gave me some gin, they got me really high and they gave me the microphone and said, "Sing!"

And I went crazy.

They told me they'd take me to a girls' Job Corps centre to perform.

I said, "How many people is there going to be?" They said, "20 or 30 people." I said, "OK."

And they called me on stage.

And I looked out from that stage and I saw all those people.

I froze. I said, "Uh-uh, I ain't going out there! Not me, not me."

So, this guy named Moody came behind me and gave me a push.

I see all the people just happy, they love me.

They love me giving them my heart.

And I said, "Wow, this is where I want to be at!"

And I never stopped.

I want to taste it when you open that...

- The one that's pumpkin?

- Oh, yeah.

- I got to taste that.

- We can open it now.

- I never heard of pumpkin beer.

- We can drink some of that.

- I sure want to taste that.

Oh, my God, this is delicious!

- Seriously. This is unbelievable.

- That's the pumpkin?

- Yeah.

- That's the pumpkin?

- It is like uncarbonated. It tastes unbelievable.

You like it? No? You don't like it?

- I don't like it.

- I think it's delicious.

- I'm going to taste the pumpkin in there.

Working with Charles Bradley as opposed to working with Sharon Lee

or the other singers from New York that I so often work with, Charles has got the craziest stories.

Craziest stories.

So, you know, as a songwriter, I just sit around and I hear Charles tell these stories

and you're like, "We've got to write a song about that."

So usually before we do the vocals on the track, I'll play Charles' song

and just ask him if he likes it first of all.

I'll sing him my ideas and say, "This is how I think it should go."

Not that he disregards my ideas, but he's got his own ideas and he instantly starts expressing them.

He'll just start singing and then we'll stop and get away from it for a second and just talk.

If you talk with Charles long enough, a story comes out about something.

Without me asking him, he'll start singing about what we spoke about.

Then I'll just grab a pencil and paper and let him freestyle over the track over and over again.

Then we'll go back and that'll become a song slowly, over the course of a couple of hours,

but it's his stories I'm always trying to translate into a song.

I was bouncing into different bands like that.

They'd say, "Man, we'll pay you 40 to do this show tonight."

This guy paid me to do this tonight. That's how I was doing out there.

And at that time, I don't know why...I got sick.

I called my mom and she said, "Son, come on back home."

Mom is getting old

and she's been through a lot.

It's not for me to crucify her for what she did in her life.

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