Solomon Burke, R.I.P.

Hey, thanks to Guy Stevens, I will begin to post some things again ... both new things, and also will reprise some things salvaged from my previous blog .... sort of a "best of" collection.  Today I got this poignant and thoughtful note from friend Joe Chonto in New York about the passing of one of soul music's greatest legends ... the message is worth being heard, so I am passing it along...

Deniz

Yeah, it hurts to see King Solomon leave way too soon.  East Berlin, spring 1990, he
pulled me and my woman (of the time -- Dagmar) onstage to dance with him.  The story
is: he had played in East Berlin a few years before -- just magnificent, the
audience totally grooving and ecstatic -- that energy just driving him and the band
to further heights.  Finally, he said, "They told us not to do this song.  But we're
gonna do it anyway and ROCK THIS HOUSE TONIGHT."  The crowd went totally wild as he
broke into "A Change Is Gonna Come."  The "authorities" let him do the song
(probably afraid of a riot if they stopped him) but immediately after whisked King
Solomon & band to the airport and flew them out,  persona non grata from then on. 
(Fortunately that show was videoed -- saw it on German TV.)  Until the wall fell and
"changes" started happening.  So his spring 1990 concert there was highly symbolic;
he brought an 8-10 pc. New Orleans band with him, hundreds of roses in vases all
over the stage (which he threw to audience members) and at one point pulling people
up onstage.  A concert I and I'm sure hundreds others will never forget -- a
celebration of human liberation just as moving and significant as Bernstein
conducting Beethoven's Ninth at the East Berlin Opera house.  At the time of the
concert, it was still East Germany, we had to go through checkpoints, the
Ostdeutsche mark the currency, and walking out of the show into the East Berlin
night was like stepping 50 years or more back in time -- no taxis, no bars or
restaurants open, just a few cars passing -- no colored lights anywhere, a black and
white world like an old movie, a radical change of scenery from the concert hall, to
say the least. . . .   As a side note, it seems he did the show for the love of it
-- the costs had to have been huge and with the East mark trading then at about 8.5
to the dollar, the tickets cost about $3. ea.  Don't think the government was into
subsidizing the show, either, so someone took a financial bath.  Somewhere along the
line someone (King Solomon?) just said "screw the money, this is more important."

But (to state the obvious) what a truly great artist.  Those early Atlantic records,
his soulful sermonizing from the stage (not a "praise Jesus" thing, but lessons in
life, understanding, urging positive growth), his recordings of the last decade,
doing material that challenged him, opened and extended the genre of "soul" -- well,
it all speaks so exquisitely for itself. . . .

Joe