Old, lazy, smooth, Percy Sledge

The quest to ask Percy Sledge an original question leads down some blind alleys. A Swedish journalist recently queried him on the vital statistics of his sex life, betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of the Sledge oeuvre. He might have 12 children and 11 grandchildren but he was never a stud. When soul went priapic Sledge's career as a tearful balladeer detumesced.

An upturn in his fortunes came when Levis hijacked the three-minute masterpiece he's famous for to sell trousers. Since then, ``When a Man Loves a Woman'' has graced the soundtrack of more movies than there's space to list. Now there's even a movie named after the song. How many other soul classics can boast that? If only he hadn't given away the songwriting credit.

His reputation salvaged, Sledge thought of heeding the advice of his old pals in Muscle Shoals: he'd been out of the studio too long. I'll Be Your Everything was released in 1974, Percy five years later. He might have played for three presidents (none of whom he has voted for) but he has mainly toured night-clubs. ``That's my life,'' he says. ``People like to sit back and relax and have a drink with the wife that they love, and hear my voice and then go home.'' But there's nothing like being big in the Alps for realising how small you are.

Sledge, who took four years out from 1975 suffering from exhaustion, isn't one to rush matters. ``I put the word around that I was looking for a producer. That was about eight years ago.'' His lack of haste was due to reservations. ``When Quin Ivy and Marlin Greene [his producer and arranger] retired in 1974, I just didn't feel like going in the studio any more. I didn't know which way to turn. They had taught me everything and I relied on them.''

He eventually recorded a song for a movie soundtrack with Barry Goldberg, who two years later mailed him a tape of some songs. A year on he contacted Goldberg. ``I said, `Are you still interested in doing the LP?' He said, `Well sure, I just been waiting on you call me.' ``

Blue Night is Sledge's best original collection yet, and although recorded well away from his native Alabama, it clings to his roots. Among the guests are Bobby Womack, Steve Cropper and Memphis-like horns, and amid the respectable soul pastiches are a few genuine articles - Otis Redding's ``I've Got Dream to Remember'', James Carr's ``These Ain't Raindrops'' and the Temptations' ``I Wish It Would Rain''.

There's nothing like the song Sledge refers to as ``the record'', but then cris de coeur like that only happen once in a singer's lifetime. He still tells the story with an extraordinary freshness. Like oral literature, the tale has grown in the telling. The song is about a girl called Lizz King, two grades above him in school. He was popular, but she wouldn't even look at him. Two years after he'd left school they met on a blind date.

``OK, so here we go. We dated about two or three more years, and I had to go to Chicago and I tell her, `Lizz,' I say, `I'm going to go out of town for the summer and I'll see you when I get back, OK?' So when I get back she was gone. A friend told me she left with another guy.''

Not long after, he was asked to front a local band called the Esquires. He hadn't sung since school, but the $50 carrot was attractive to a nurse turned construction worker. He sang Wilson Pickett, Fats Domino, the Beatles. ``People acted like they were so crazy about me, so I tell [Calvin] Lewis and [Andrew] Wright (who subsequently took the writing credit), `Hit me a note on the keyboard and bass.' I was still thinking about Lizz and I sang, `Why did you leave me, baby, when you didn't have to go?' So it just happened that Quin Ivy was at that party that night and he said, `Man, what in the world was that song that you were singing?' I said, `Man, I don't know, I just made it up on the stage.' ``

Ivy told him to write some snappier lyrics and he'd have a hit. ``Well, what did I know about writing lyrics to a song? I can't play no instrument, this is the first time I ever sung in front of a crowd before in my life, but I was excited. I went home and told my momma, I'm gonna cut me a record.'' She always wanted me to sing spirituals, not blues. About two or three weeks later I'm sittin' in that house and I mean it was rainin', and we lived in one of those tin-top houses, and I just wailed off, `Why did you leave me baby?' And I couldn't come up with nothin'.

``And so I went back about a month later and I told Quin, I'm sorry but you've no idea as when a man loves a woman he can't even think right' and he said, `Wait a minute, what you say?' I said, `You no idea when a man's crazy.' He said, `No, what did you say? You said, ``When a man loves a woman.' I said, `Yeah, I said he can't think, I said he'd do anything she wants him to do, he'd even go sleep out in the rain if she wanted him to do it. All she got to do is say.' He said, `Why hell, that's it, that's the song. Write around ``When a man loves a woman''. You know how you feel about her, right? Take it home and write around that. About three weeks later I had two verses there except for two lines.''

After the song had become a hit, Sledge found Lizz in New Jersey, and discovered she'd not left with another man at all. She came straight back to him: soul music's most poignant expression of lost love is founded on a fallacy.

The song remains the same, but its two characters have moved on: Percy, rotund and sporting the only surviving Afro in pop, has almost as many grandchildren as he has rings on his fingers. Lizz, who recognised Sledge's voice as soon as she heard it on the radio, is now ``a big spiritual person. She don't date no more, nothin', she don't even fool with boys or nothin' no more.''

The voice hasn't changed much. ``It's probably not as sparkling, but it's still got that old lazy, smooth, Percy Sledge type o' sound. I'm not tryin' to reach nowhere where I'm not supposed to be.'' Is he still singing about Lizz? ``No, I'm singing about my [third] wife now.'' How many different women has he sung about? ``Oh man, so many, since that song been recorded. `Cause I been infatuated with a lot of girls in between that time.'' Time to stop, before the interview turns Swedish.

- `Blue Night' is released on Virgin Records on Nov 7

(Photograph omitted)