“People were being nice to him, but you got a glimpse into this real sadness – his whole identity was built on being someone else. “When Daptone was being built, I took a ride with Charles to go to Home Depot to buy building supplies, and people were saying to him, ‘What up, James?’ and ‘How’s it going, Black?’” Brenneck says. In the meantime, he was part of the Daptone family, even helping build the label’s studio. He turned up at Roth’s door around the turn of the millennium and announced: “I heard you were looking for a singer.” He sang for Roth there and then, and Daptone soon got him in a studio, recording Rodriguez covers, although he didn’t release his first album, No Time for Dreaming, until 2011. ”īradley sought out Roth when he decided being Black Velvet wasn’t enough. “Black Velvet,” explains Gabe Roth, who co-founded Daptone, “was this superhero that helped him transcend all the struggles of his life. ‘He carried weight and anguish every time he sang.’ Photograph: Kisha Bari “He showed me the versatility of the song – he took Changes to a new level.”
“I remember how completely blown away I was the first time I heard it,” Ozzy Osbourne says of Bradley’s version of Black Sabbath’s Changes, which Bradley recast as a deep soul waltz. “He had that thing that won’t let you sleep at night if you ignore it or makes your body move in a way you didn’t think it could, to touch the truly raw places of your spirit and let it take you somewhere bigger than you,” says Nathaniel Rateliff. I have never cried more tears of joy and sorrow watching someone perform.” You could see how happy he was on stage, but you could also feel his pain. “Charles genuinely loved his audience and his fans, and it radiated through him. “He made it look easy because he was a natural,” says country artist Margo Price. He was 100% right and that’s the difference between an entertainer and an artist.”įrom 2002, when Bradley made his first recordings for Daptone Records, until his death from cancer in September 2017, he found a voice that put his life into sound. He didn’t think a singer had soul unless they had experienced some sort of tragedy in their life and they were singing about that. “Pain was very wrapped up in art for him. Photograph: Isaac SterlingĪfter Bradley returned to New York, in 1996, he awoke one night to hear the sounds of police cars arriving at the nearby scene of what proved to be his brother’s murder. ‘Pain was very wrapped up in art for him’.
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