Charles Bradley: A Victim of Love, Healing
When the credits roll, Charles Bradley sings, “I thank you for helping me through the storm.” According to director Poull Brien, his documentary Charles Bradley: Soul of America needed a conclusion—an original song that summed up his look into Bradley’s slow rise from James Brown impersonator to Best New Artist at age 62. Fortunately Bradley’s songwriting partner, Thomas Brenneck, had the start of a song handy. Immediately, Bradley started to sing.
“Through the Storm” now concludes Bradley’s sophomore album Victim of Love, out today. The idea for his album title came on a beautiful day in Madrid, spent inside a dingy bar. Bradley was discussing with Brenneck and R&B revival trio Little Barrie the nicknames he’s earned over the years, when a patron mistakenly heard one, Beacon of Love, as “Victim of Love.” Brenneck thought of how Bradley takes care of his 89-year-old mother, even before he agreed to move into her basement this year. He also thought of how audience members have cried on Bradley’s shoulders after shows. “I was like, ‘Holy shit, Victim of Love is so bold,’” Brenneck said. Immediately, he wanted Bradley to write a song.
By his debut album No Time for Dreaming, released in January 2011 via Daptone Records, Bradley bore a lifetime of odd jobs, bouts of homelessness and heartbreaking loss—memories and struggles that often made him cry at the sheer thought. He has since toured festivals like Austin City Limits, South by Southwest and Bonnaroo, and Daptone Records even reissued No Time for Dreaming less than a year later. As a result, the former James Brown impersonator learned to embrace singing as Charles Bradley, as he does at age 64 in Victim of Love.
In the spare, soul-inflected No Time for Dreaming, Bradley’s resemblance to the Godfather of Soul was almost uncanny. His wails especially harkened to a time captured in Soul of America, when Bradley would tuck his hair under a slick wig and perform as either James Brown, Jr. or Black Velvet. But as himself, without the wig or the act, Bradley struggled to sing even briefly about what he had endured. The first time Bradley heard a studio version of No Time for Dreaming’s “Heartaches & Pain,” a song about his brother’s final moments before he was shot dead, Bradley walked away and refused to hear the rest.