Charles Bradley’s Bleeding Soul

Imagine a kinder, gentler James Brown with all the raw power and soul intact. Charles Bradley puts a serious hurtin’ on you, pouring out bucketloads of pain that leave ankle deep soulful puddles he splashes through during a sweaty energetic set that belies his 66 years.

Bradley and Brown have a lot in common, so much so that Bradley formerly made a living as a Brown clone, performing the Godfather of Soul’s act in his old Brooklyn neighborhood as Black Velvet.

Bradley’s back in his old neighborhood with Live from the House of Soul (out Feb. 12 on Daptone Records), but this time under his own name and backed by a young soul band that cranks it hard.

The house of soul isn’t a club, it’s the back alley of Daptone studios, AKA the House of Soul. The band, called the Menahan Street Band for this occasion, consists of musicians culled from the apparently endless supply of young soul men in the Daptone stable who can play like ’60s Stax or Muscle Shoals vets. Various incarnations of the stable doing bidness as The Dap Kings and the Budos Band have backed Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones as well.

Producer/guitarist Paul Brenneck, a member of both bands, seems to have been ordained in a house of soul worship facility. Steve Cropper licks rippling from his fingers drape Bradley in a soul cape that doesn’t get thrown off when Bradley does his knee drops, staying wrapped tightly around Bradley’s anguished moans and cries.

“Love Bug” is pure JBs era soul, funky and horny, Bradley shredding his vocal chords with Brown-ish yowls.

Bradley offers personal insights between songs on the DVD, introducing each tune with a heartfelt explanation of what the tune means to him and how it has affected his life. For “Where Do We Go From Here”, Bradley says he wants to “thank God and everybody who made me the person I always wanted to be.” This is more than a performance. You can believe his passion and pain is real. Bradley emphasizes his point with a warehouse full of James Brown’s vocal tics, uhhhhs, grunts and groans squeezed out of his anguished soul like a rolled up tube of toothpaste.

“I AM a Victim of Love,” Bradley says, introducing the tune of the same name. “I still love in spite of all that stress and pain I’ve been through.” It sounds like late ‘50’s era JB, a cauldron of pain simmering on the fire, the coals banked with some velvety doo-wop from Paul and Bill Schalda and Brenneck.

Bradley’s lived a rough life, and he looks like it as well as sounding like it. But there’s something noble about his battered visage, a Rocky Balboa against all odds comeback vibe that shines through the rough exterior.

“Crying In the Chapel” is not the Elvis weeper, but Bradley puts on a hurtin’ display fit for a King. “I have bittersweet memories,” he says in the intro. “When I love, I love deeply, and it hurts to the bone.” Bradlely leaves Brown at home for this one, trotting out Percy Sledge instead for some sandpaper soul that drips blood and tears.

Although Bradley retains many of Brown’s mannerisms and stage moves, he’s still very much his own soul man, delivering his message with a ton of heart as well as a heaping pile of soul he shovels out by the wheelbarrow load when he performs. It may be hard on him, but his pain is a beacon for all of us who’ve suffered heart pains and appreciate what it takes to stand and testify night after night, baring your ripped and bleeding soul.