824 Wilson Pickett (1941-2006) “In the Midnight Hour” 1965

“if Pickett wasn’t the first, he has a strong claim to being the greatest purveyor of Pentecostal-style vocal pyrotechnics on the pop scene, virtually everyone described the singer as ‘his own worst enemy’...Born in 1941 in a two-room sharecroppers’ shack in rural Alabama, Pickett was scarred by physical abuse and poverty...and he remained a difficult loner, subject to extreme mood swings and paranoid rages. Music provided some release, but playful pugnaciousness turned to brutal violence when he was drunk, which was often – and that was before the cocaine” (Elijah Wald, New Statesman, Apr. 2017). 

Wilson Pickett “In the Midnight Hour”