"I'll Be Your Everything" by Percy Sledge
In which Mr. Sledge, late of Cape Town, ventures to Macon and a new start with Mr. Walden.
“Walking In The Sun”:
By the early seventies, Percy Sledge was primed for a comeback. After a string of big hits for Atlantic in the mid-to-late sixties (most famously “When A Man Loves A Woman”), Sledge hadn’t released an album since 1968. In the interim, Sledge had largely stayed away from the studio, busying himself with international gigs, particularly in South Africa, where he was massively popular.
Phil Walden was from Macon, Georgia, not far from Sledge’s home in Leighton, Alabama. Walden had been a teenage R&B fanatic, and he got his start by signing to a management contract a young singer from Macon named Otis Redding. Redding and Walden became fast friends and confidantes in addition to their professional relationship, and soon Phil and younger brother Alan formed a publishing company, Redwal, with Redding. It was the first integrated company in Macon, and it was not particularly well-received by the citizenry there, least of all Walden’s father.
“To get around detection I used to say I was going out on a date, go out and pick up the band, drive 200 miles to a college date, then come back and clean up the car of cigarette butts and all that shit.”
When Redding made his fabled debut at Stax Records in 1962, the result was “These Arms Of Mine” (#20 R&B), and from there Walden and Redding’s fortunes enjoyed a steady upward climb. Redding became a global superstar, the face of soul music to much of white America, but his life was cut tragically short by a plane crash in 1967. A devastated Walden soldiered on, and in 1969, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler gave Walden his own record company, Capricorn, to be distributed by Atco.
Capricorn built a studio in downtown Macon, and Walden bought session guitarist Duane Allman out of his contract with Muscle Shoals kingpin Rick Hall. One of Capricorn’s first signings was the newly minted Allman Brothers Band, who became the platinum-selling mainstays of the label.
But Walden’s heart was still in soul music, even if his company’s wasn’t. When Sledge’s contract with Atlantic came to its sputtering close in 1973, Walden, already managing Sledge, added him to Capricorn roster.
The resulting album, 1974’s I’ll Be Your Everything, is a master class in the rapidly-vanishing art of deep Southern soul. Produced by Sledge’s trusted factotum Quin Ivy, (who’d been with Sledge since he was still a hospital orderly) and recorded in Sheffield with the Muscle Shoals Sound crew supporting, it showcases a Percy Sledge still in full command of the talents that made him an international star.
“Make It Good and Make It Last”:
“Walkin’ In The Sun” (#15 R&B) perfectly encapsulates the sun-drenched, slightly weary tone of the album, with Sledge crooning: “Things have been going wrong long enough to know/When everything’s just right/I’ve been walking in the dark long enough to know when/I’ve finally seen the light/I’ve been losing long enough to know/When I’ve finally won.” A similar resignation, tempered with hope, permeates the slow-building “Make It Good and Make It Last”.
The sprightly “I Believe In You” proves Sledge to be quite comfortable with the proto-disco sound that was beginning to permeate the radio. Sledge’s vocal prowess is showcased on the tender, persevering “The Good Love”, built on a bluesy bed of guitars, courtesy of Pete Carr and the inimitable Jimmy Johnson.
“I Believe In You”:
“If This Is The Last Time” finds Percy laying on his trademark wailing devotion a little thick, as he also does on “So Hard To Be Friends”, although the latter is a much stronger song. “Blue Water”, however, is one of the best cuts on I’ll Be Your Everything, with Sledge’s vocals gathering intensity atop the bands’ compounding rhythms until the song reaches its moving climax.
Sledge stays true to his trademark country-soul on a sublime version of Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors”, a song that seems tailor-made for him. The title track reaches majesty through its sweeping chorus and rock-steady verses, underpinned by the peerless rhythm section of Barry Beckett and Roger Hawkins. Elsewhere, a steady, driving backing track keeps “Love Among People” from lapsing into bathos.
While I’ll Be Your Everything did little to reverse Percy Sledge’s flagging commercial fortunes, and even less to bail out the sinking ship that was soul music circa 1974, it holds its own against anything from Sledge’s vaunted sixties heyday. And with it being another two decades before he’d release another album of original material, it’s also a swan song from a master of his chosen field, a warm and tender farewell to the music that had brought him to the world, far from the broiling cotton fields of northern Alabama, much farther than he’d ever dreamed he could go.
“Blue Water”: