Charles Bradley's Story

When I first heard Charles Bradley, I thought he was a new kid impersonating James Brown and the old-school funk and soul sound. When I read that he was born 1948, something didn’t quite add up. If he was that old, why is his name starting to emerge only now, in the past decade or so? Well, his story is very interesting and it goes like this:

Bradley was grandma’s child. She raised him from the age of eight months up until he turned eight years when his mother took him back to live with her in Brooklyn. In 1962, Charles and his sister went to see James Brown perform at the Apollo Theater. He was so inspired by Brown’s performance that he began to practice mimicking Brown's style of singing and stage mannerisms at home. At the age of fourteen, Bradley ran away from home to escape poor living conditions and lived drifting on the streets during the day and sleeping in subway cars for two years. After those homeless years, he enlisted in Job Corps which eventually led him to Bar Harbor, Maine to train as a chef. While there, a co-worker told him he looked like James Brown and asked if he could sing. Bradley was very shy in the beginning but managed to overcome his stage fright when a crew member pushed him through the curtains onto the stage. He continued working with that group and performed five or six times before his band mates were drafted into the Vietnam War, and the act never re-formed. Bradley continued to work in Maine as a cook for ten years and then decided to hitchhike west across the country. He lived in upstate New York, Seattle, Canada and Alaska before settling in California in 1977. There, Bradley worked odd jobs and played small shows for 20 years, before his time finally came.

In 1996, Bradley's mother called him and asked him to once more move back in with her in Brooklyn so she could get to know him. There he began making a living moonlighting as a James Brown impersonator in local clubs under the name "Black Velvet." While performing under the moniker, he was eventually discovered by Gabriel Roth (better known as "Bosco Mann"), a co-founder of Daptone Records. He introduced Bradley to Daptone artist and his future producer Tom Brenneck, then the songwriter and guitarist for The Bullets, and later for Menahan Street Band, who invited Bradley to his band's rehearsal. Bradley asked that the band simply perform while he made up lyrics on the spot. After writing several songs, Daptone released some of these initial recordings on vinyl starting in 2002.

Bradley's debut album “No Time for Dreaming” was released in 2011. Soon after that, the director Poull Brien which made the video for "The World (Is Going Up In Flames)” decided to make a documentary about Charles Bradley’s life story. In the spring of 2012, “Soul of America,” debuted at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. The film told Bradley's story from his childhood in Florida to the days of homelessness and heartache, then later his gigs as Black Velvet, and finally ended with him touring and recording at Daptone Records. The film included his performance at festivals around the world. In the meantime, Bradley recorded and released two more studio albums, “Victim Of Love” in 2013, and “Changes” in 2016.