WILSON PICKETT stood second only to Otis Redding among the great male soul singers of the 1960s. His vocal style was raw and earthy and few worked up a greater sweat on stage or pumped up a crowd with more vigour. His greatest records were made in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and helped to define the style that became known as “Southern soul”.
Among his most memorable hits were In the Midnight Hour, Land of 1,000 Dances and Mustang Sally. All came in the 1960s and, although nothing in his later career matched his early glory, he remained a popular draw on the live circuit.
Pickett also bequeathed a lasting legacy to the English language. During the 1960s he became known as “the Wicked Pickett”, an epithet that was initially earned due to his lecherous eye, but soon took on a wider meaning to become the first recorded example of the now common reverse slang in which “bad” translates as “good” and “wicked” means “great”.
Born in Prattville, Alabama, on March 18, 1941, the youngest of 11 children, Pickett had an unhappy childhood and later described his mother as “the baddest woman”. He was using the word in its original sense, and claimed that she beat him viciously, forcing him on many occasions to run away from home and hide in the woods with his dog. When he reached 14 he went to live with his father in Detroit.
In common with most classic soul singers of his era, he found his voice in the local church choir and soon after his arrival in Detroit in 1955 he joined a gospel group, the Violinaires. Four years later, encouraged by the example of Sam Cooke, with whom he had toured the American South, he decided to abandon the gospel circuit for the potentially more lucrative secular rhythm ‘n’ blues market, and replaced the singer Joe Stubbs in The Falcons.
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Although largely forgotten today, the group’s fusion of gospel fervour and R&B grooves played a significant part in the development of the emerging style known as soul music. Pickett’s biggest hit with the Falcons came in 1962, with I Found a Love, and its success led swiftly to his first solo recording, I’m Gonna Cry, for the Correctone label. The record made no impact, but better was to follow when he signed to Lloyd Price’s Double L label. He enjoyed minor hits in 1963 with If You Need Me, a slow-burning soul ballad featuring a spoken sermon, and It’s Too Late.
He also sent a demo of If You Need Me, which he had co-written, to Atlantic Records, who promptly gave the song to Solomon Burke to record. Burke’s cover was the bigger hit and, to Pickett’s disappointment, undercut the success of his own recording, but it was sufficient to persuade Atlantic to buy out his Double L contract. Further compensation came when the Rolling Stones covered the song.
After an initial failure with Come Home Baby, a duet with Tammi Lynn produced by Bert Berns, in 1965 Atlantic put Pickett in the Stax studios in Memphis with Booker T and the MGs as his backing band. It turned out to be an inspired pairing and one of the first results was In the Midnight Hour, co-written by Pickett and the MGs’ guitarist Steve Cropper. With a strutting, funky beat, riffing horns and a passionate vocal, it topped the R&B lists, crossed over to the pop charts and remains one of the all-time classic soul records, covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Rascals.
During the same Memphis sessions, Pickett also recorded Don’t Fight It, 634-5789 and Ninety-Nine and One-Half (Won’t Do), but for his next outing Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler switched to the Fame studios, Muscle Shoals. It was there that Pickett recorded his next trio of big hits, Mustang Sally (written by Mack Rice, an old colleague from the Falcons), Funky Broadway and Land of 1,000 Dances, the definitive version of Chris Kenner’s irresistible roll call of popular dance floor moves.
The 1967 album The Wicked Pickett immortalised the nickname he had been given around the Atlantic offices and he continued recordings hits at Muscle Shoals throughout the late 1960s, working profitably with the guitarist Duane Allman on covers of Hey Jude and Born to be Wild among others. Further hits included I’m A Midnight Mover (a rather blatant attempt to revive the success of In the Midnight Hour) and She’s Looking Good, but a 1970 cover of the Archies’ bubblegum hit Sugar Sugar suggested that Pickett was running out of ideas.
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Atlantic’s solution was to send him to Philadelphia, where he recorded with the production team of Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble, who sharpened him up again and restored him to the charts with (Get Me Back On Time) Engine Number 9, Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You and Don’t Knock My Love.
In 1972 he parted company with Atlantic and signed for RCA, but he was never the same force again. There were several reasons. One was simply the change in musical fashions. Pickett’s rasping vocal style was totally out of step with the disco age and he made his contempt for the new style clear. Secondly, he developed an unenviable off-stage reputation for heavy drinking, a fiery temper and general instability, evidenced in 1974 when he was arrested in New York for pulling out a gun during an argument.
He continued to release records sporadically, putting out material on his own Wicked label and even briefly signing to Motown in 1988 for a new version of In the Midnight Hour. But in later decades he became essentially a touring rather a recording act, enjoying a different kind of success on the nostalgia circuit with various soul revues.
Unfortunately, trouble never seemed to be far away and in 1987 he was put on two years, probation for carrying a loaded shotgun in his car. In a bizarre incident four years later he was arrested for yelling death threats while driving a car over the mayor’s front lawn in Englewood, New Jersey. A girlfriend brought charges of assault against him, and in 1993 he was sentenced to a year in prison for drink-driving after he hit an 86-year-old man.
The second half of the 1990s were no better: there were several arrests for cocaine possession and he spent some time in a rehabilitation facility.
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Amid these lows came a few highs. In 1991 he was inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame and, two years later, he was given the Pioneer award by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. He returned to the studio in 1999 to record It’s Harder Now, his first album in 12 years, and was rewarded with a Grammy nomination. He continued to perform live until 2004.
On the news of his death, his friend Solomon Burke said Pickett had recently “turned his life around” and that they had been planning to record an album together with fellow old-timers Ben E. King and Don Covay.
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Wilson Pickett, soul singer, was born on March 18, 1941. He died after a heart attack on January 19, 2006, aged 64.