THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE: Everybody Needs Somebody To Love

This is one of the many completed chapters I cut from the working draft of my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). 

An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!

SOLOMON BURKE: Everybody Needs Somebody To Love

Written by Jerry Wexler, Bert Berns, and Solomon Burke

Produced by Bert Berns

Atlantic Records single, 1964

Welcome to the one true Church Of Love. The Reverend Solomon Burke will testify, and you will believe. 

Solomon Burke never got to be as well-known to the white American pop audience as he should have been. His string of soulful singles on the Atlantic label from 1961 to 1967 yielded fourteen Top 20 R & B hits (including nine Top 10 hits, and the 1964 # 1 "Got To Get You Off My Mind"), with scattered additional success with other labels into the '70s. But not a one of 'em did any better on the Hot 100 than "Got To Get You Off Of My Mind"'s pop peak at # 22. Solomon Burke did not cross over. His music is better-known to many via covers by the Rolling Stones and the Blues Brothers, or maybe via the film Dirty Dancing, which used Burke's "Cry To Me" in a key scene.

But Solomon Burke was soul personified. He took country, blues, and pop, and when he sang, it all came out as soul.

Burke was a big, big man, weighing well over 300 pounds, maybe 400. He sat on a throne while singing, the King of Rock 'n' Soul. His holiday single "Presents For Christmas" included a throwaway line that he was fat enough to be the world's biggest Santa Claus. As big as he was, his voice was bigger, a force of (you guessed it!) soul that could boom deeply or float high above as needed, as he decreed, all purred with royal ease by the king in his kingdom. When Burke teamed with other soul giants Arthur Conley, Ben E. King, Don Covay, and Joe Tex as the Soul Clan for the 1968 single "Soul Meeting," the group referred to Burke as King Sol.

"Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" was written by Burke, Bert Berns, and Jerry Wexler. It's as easygoing as a powerhouse can be, steamrolling a declaration of love, a plea for love, a demand for love, while retaining a beatific smile and the secure composure of one who rules all that he surveys. If you only know it through covers by the Stones or the Blues Brothers, or even if you know it from the great Wilson Pickett's own bravura rendition, you don't know it at all if you don't know Solomon Burke. You don't. It's his song, and no one has ever come within sovereign airspace of annexing it. 

There can't be one single definitive soul record, any more than there could be one definitive rock 'n' roll record, or a one definitive country record. Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" should always be on the long shortlist of candidates, with Otis, James, Aretha, the wicked, wicked Pickett, and all of the worthiest purveyors of the pure sound of soul. 

Soul. 

No one was ever more soulful than Solomon Burke.

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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/

If it's true that one book leads to another, my next book will be The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Stay tuned. Your turn is coming.

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