"We made three or four songs, and as we were playing them back, because the session was finished, Solomon is out the door.
Two years later, he was introduced to Jerry Wexler, then a top executive with Atlantic Records, the premiere rhythm and blues label of the day.
I was on chicken wings, you know, anything I could get."Īfter a year on the street, he was working again as an embalmer, and at other odd jobs. Everybody had just turned their back on me. His manager could do that because he was one of the most powerful disc jockeys on the East Coast. Took all my records off the air," says Burke. Plus, "He still took 10 percent of the $350."īurke confronted the business manager, who then threatened to "break" him. "I was told I was making $350 a night, and I was making like $3,000 a night," says Burke. Then, in 1957, he discovered that his business manager was pocketing a lot more than the 10 percent he was entitled to. Over the next three years, Burke toured up and down the East Coast, having the time of his life. It was the beginning of the beginning of the beginning." They're playing your song on the radio,'" says Burke. He was just 14 when he wrote and recorded his first "hit." "People were saying, 'They're playing your song on the radio. "She said, 'See the hesitatin? I'm back in the saddle again … Pronounce it properly.'" "My grandmother said, 'Listen carefully as he pronounces these words … I'm back in the saddle again,'" recalls Burke. And at home she made him listen to her favorite singer, Gene Autry. But it was his grandmother who instilled in him a love of God and country - country music, that is. His mother was a devout Baptist, his stepfather an Ethiopian Jew and a Kosher butcher named Vincent Burke. By age 12, Burke was known as the "wonder boy preacher" with his own weekly radio show in Philadelphia, where he grew up. The story begins, as with so many soul singers, in the Baptist Church. So how did a musician become a mortician? Not by choice. "Once a mortician, always a mortician," says Burke, who has owned funeral homes in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. He has spent most of his life as an entrepreneur, providing for his huge family by building a mortuary business. He's a great actor."Įven while he makes his comeback, Burke says music is just his hobby. Since all singing is a trade-off between music and drama, he's the master at both," he says.
How does he rate Burke among the soul or blues singers? "I rate him at the very top.