Percy Sledge: True Love Travels on a Gravel Road

My first exposure to "When A Man Loves A Woman" was Michael Bolton performing his No. 1 version of the song on Top Of The Pops in '91. Bolton, with his cascading, trapped-in-a-wind-tunnel hair and white shirt undone past the nipples, wailing every last note as if singlehandedly trying to will The X Factor into being. The TOTP crowd swaying their arms in time. My mum humming and swooning along. My balding dad watching on, simultaneously envious and bored. 

Based on this Bolton abomination and its presence on commercials and all manner of dubious love-related compilations, I wrote off “When A Man...” as phony, irredeemable schmaltz à la "I Just Called to Say I Love You" or "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?", and dismissed Percy Sledge, the man who came up with the melody for the song and recorded the 1966 original, as some forefather of sap.

It was only years later when I read Peter Guralnick's book Sweet Soul Music where he refers to Sledge in the same terms as Elvis, Otis and Aretha and I bought the It Tears Me Up Rhino Records compilation that the penny dropped: of course he's that good, of course he is. Daaamn yooou, Bolton! 
Listen afresh to Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman" and one is blown away by the subtlety in the performance of both band and singer; the rises and falls in the song incredibly passionate and affecting, yet controlled, classy (and a clear "influence" on Procol Harum's monster "White Shade of Pale" released 13 months later). Of course this "holy love hymn" was the first US number one recorded at Muscle Shoals. Of course it was a UK Top 5 single on two separate occasions, twenty years apart. As Paul Gambacini said: "It never had a time. It was in a world of its own, so it was timeless".

When news of Sledge's death to liver cancer at the age of 74 was announced yesterday, he was perhaps inevitably referred to as 'Percy Sledge of "When A Man Loves A Woman" fame'. While a legacy worthy of any singer, the song was only the spring-board in terms of Sledge's career, the first in a run of wonderful soul ballads described by rock critic Dave Marsh as "emotional classics for romantics of all ages": "I'm Hanging Up My Heart For You", "Warm and Tender Love", “It Tears Me Up”, his heartbreaking, brilliantly melodramatic tale of seeing an ex-lover walk down the street with a new man ("I can't stop cryin'...I feel like I'm dyin'!").

Sledge's voice perhaps lacks the true grit of Otis Redding or the honeyed sweetness of Sam Cooke, but he knows how to bring a song home. There is a sincere, heartfelt, grown-up quality to his instrument which really resonates, especially on his interpretations of meaty soul standards like "Love Me Tender", "Drown In My Own Tears" and "Dark End of the Street". His 1969 take on "True Love Travels on a Gravel Road", a "kind of jaunty" slice of country-funk popularised by Elvis, is my personal favourite.