10-10-2010, 21:06
Not much of a name to be known in Thailand, but he's BIG in USA;
Let's take off our hats for this Giant;
Solomon Burke, the larger-than-life "King of Rock and Soul," whose songs blended soul, gospel, country and R&B, died early Sunday at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at age 70.
Born to the sound of music in an upstairs room of a Philadelphia church, Burke was acknowledged as one of the greatest soul singers of the 1960s, but his popularity never matched that of contemporaries like James Brown or Marvin Gaye.
He wrote "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" in 1964 and it was later featured in the Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi movie "The Blues Brothers." The Rolling Stones and Wilson Pickett also recorded it.
His song "Cry To Me" featured in the background as a bare-chested Patrick Swayze danced seductively with Jennifer Grey in one of the most memorable scenes from the movie "Dirty Dancing."
He remained closely linked to the church as a preacher. In 2000, he played for then-Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
Burke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 and won a Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy a year later for "Don't Give Up On Me."
Those honors sparked a renewed interest in the singer and he toured extensively around the world in recent years.
Burke and his band would play without set lists, instead performing whatever the audience wanted to hear.
"It's like turning back the hands of time instantly," he said on his website. "We can be in the middle of singing something from my recent 'Like A Fire' album, and they'll call out 'Stupidity' from 1957 and we're back 50 years!"
Burke combined his singing with the role of preacher and patriarch of a huge family of 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren.
"Loving people," he said at a recent performance in London, "is what I do."
Let's take off our hats for this Giant;
Solomon Burke, the larger-than-life "King of Rock and Soul," whose songs blended soul, gospel, country and R&B, died early Sunday at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at age 70.
Born to the sound of music in an upstairs room of a Philadelphia church, Burke was acknowledged as one of the greatest soul singers of the 1960s, but his popularity never matched that of contemporaries like James Brown or Marvin Gaye.
He wrote "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" in 1964 and it was later featured in the Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi movie "The Blues Brothers." The Rolling Stones and Wilson Pickett also recorded it.
His song "Cry To Me" featured in the background as a bare-chested Patrick Swayze danced seductively with Jennifer Grey in one of the most memorable scenes from the movie "Dirty Dancing."
He remained closely linked to the church as a preacher. In 2000, he played for then-Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
Burke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 and won a Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy a year later for "Don't Give Up On Me."
Those honors sparked a renewed interest in the singer and he toured extensively around the world in recent years.
Burke and his band would play without set lists, instead performing whatever the audience wanted to hear.
"It's like turning back the hands of time instantly," he said on his website. "We can be in the middle of singing something from my recent 'Like A Fire' album, and they'll call out 'Stupidity' from 1957 and we're back 50 years!"
Burke combined his singing with the role of preacher and patriarch of a huge family of 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren.
"Loving people," he said at a recent performance in London, "is what I do."