Soul and R&B singer Charles Bradley definitely didn't arrive as a recording artist by taking the easy route. A gritty, fiercely passionate vocalist in the tradition of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, Bradley worked for decades as a journeyman soul shouter and sometimes-James Brown-impersonator before he was belatedly discovered in the 2000s by the soul-focused Daptone label, which released his first album, 2011's No Time for Dreaming, when Bradley was 62 years old. Delivering plain-spoken original songs and idiosyncratic covers of rock tunes in a vintage R&B style, Bradley became the subject of a celebrated documentary (Charles Bradley: Soul of America), cut two more acclaimed albums (2013's Victim of Love and 2016's Changes), and performed on top-rated TV shows and at major international music festivals before fate brought his late-in-life career to a close in 2017.

Born in Gainesville, Florida in 1948, but raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bradley spent a good part of his childhood living on the streets. A transformational moment came when his sister took him to see James Brown at the Apollo in 1962. Bradley was struck by Brown's energy and stage manner, and began practicing microphone tricks with a broom at home, dreaming of being a star on his own stage, and it was a dream he would never abandon in spite of all sorts of mishaps, misdirects, and general hard times.

Bradley escaped Brooklyn by joining the federal Job Corps program, which took him to Bar Harbor, Maine, where he learned to cook, a profession he was to fall back on time and time again. He also put together a band in Maine and began playing local gigs. The band didn't last long, though, and when most of its members were drafted, and with the Vietnam War hanging in the air, Bradley moved to Wassaic, New York, where he worked as a cook at a hospital for the mentally ill. Nine years later, he left that position and hitchhiked west, ending up in Alaska for a time before moving to California, again taking a job as a chef, and for the next 20 years he performed music on the side, playing whatever gigs he could find. When he was laid off from his position, though, he began to doubt his decision to live so far from where he grew up.

Bradley eventually relocated back to Brooklyn, this time working at odd jobs instead of cooking. He never let go of his musical dreams, and he began performing his James Brown-inspired routines in such local clubs as Black Velvet, attracting a loyal following and eventually capturing the attention of Gabriel Roth from Daptone Records. Roth immediately brought the fiery singer into label sessions, releasing a single, "Take It as It Comes," that showed what Bradley had to offer as a vocalist. Roth also introduced Bradley to Thomas Brenneck, then a guitarist, songwriter, and home producer for Dirt Rifle & the Bullets. The pair had an affinity for each other musically, and together they released two singles on Daptone as Charles Bradley & the Bullets before the actual group by that name disbanded (most of the members went in an Afro-beat direction with the Budos Band).

Brenneck and Bradley continued to work together, and after Bradley told him about waking up in his home one morning to discover his nephew had shot and killed his brother, Brenneck suggested they tell the story in music as a catharsis and as a cautionary tale. The result, tracked with the Menahan Street Band, was a pair of impassioned singles, "The World (Is Going Up in Flames)" and "Heartaches and Pain," which Brenneck released on his Daptone sublabel Dunham Records. These weren't songs drawn from Bradley's Black Velvet act, but were instead highly personal and striking outings that put his own emerging voice as a singer and songwriter at the center of things. A full album for Dunham, No Time for Dreaming, appeared early in 2011. Bradley received global acclaim for the album, and toured relentlessly to support it. His follow-up, Victim of Love, was released in the spring of 2013. In 2015, Bradley released a single through Daptone that featured a powerful, soul-charged reworking of the Black Sabbath number "Changes." The single and its accompanying music video became underground hits, and the song became the cornerstone of Bradley's next Dunham/Daptone album, 2016's Changes. Sadly, Bradley received a cancer diagnosis in the fall of that year, and succumbed to liver cancer in September 2017 at the age of 68. However, he remained thankful for his relatively brief time in the spotlight late in life, and was quoted as saying "I love all of you out there that made my dreams come true." Dunham and Daptone paid homage to Bradley's artistry with the 2018 release Black Velvet, a collection of unreleased material from his sessions for the labels. ~ Steve Leggett

One of the most celebrated acts on the retro-soul scene, the Menahan Street Band are significantly more eclectic than many of their peers, as likely to be influenced by vintage jazz, world music, and classic film scores as R&B dusties treasured by crate diggers. Founded by producer and guitarist Thomas Brenneck, the instrumental group always sound soulful even when they're not strictly playing R&B, and they've cut a handful of memorable albums as well as backing other artists (most notably Charles Bradley). 2008's Make the Road by Walking, the group's debut, was full of bold atmospheric grooves that were combed through for samples by Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Kid Cudi, and 50 Cent, while 2021's The Exciting Sounds of the Menahan Street Band found them full of fresh ideas after a nearly ten-year break.

Thomas Brenneck initially formed the Menahan Street Band as a studio group to serve as the house band for Dunham Records, the soul-oriented label he started as an offshoot of Daptone Records. Brenneck assembled the group from members of other acts that were part of the Daptone extended family, including Dave Guy (trumpet), Bosco Mann (bass), Fernando Velez (percussion); Homer Steinweiss (drums) of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings; Aaron Johnson (trombone); Nick Movshon (bass) of Antibalas; Mike Deller (organ) and Daniel Fodder (bass) of the Budos Band; Leon Michels (multi-instrumentalist), and Toby Pazner (keyboards) of El Michels Affair. The first Menahan Street Band recording was a single, "Make the Road by Walking" b/w "Karina," that Brenneck cut using a makeshift studio setup in the bedroom of his Brooklyn apartment.

Not long after the single appeared, Brenneck was introduced to Charles Bradley, a journeyman soul singer who worked as a James Brown tribute artist when he couldn't land gigs with his own music. Brenneck was impressed by Bradley's talent, and with the MSB backing him up, he cut a single for Dunham, "The World (Is Going Up in Flames" b/w "Heartaches & Pain," that was released in 2007. After Jay-Z sampled "Make the Road by Walking" for the 2007 song "Roc Boys (And the Winner Is) …" from the album American Gangster, it boosted interest in the Menahan Street Band, and the group cut an album, also called Make the Road by Walking, which was studied for samples by a number of other major hip-hop acts. (Between record sales and sampling fees, Brenneck was able to move his studio out of his bedroom and into a loft in Queens.) As Bradley's career slowly took off, the MSB continued to serve as his accompanists, cutting an album with him, No Time for Dreaming, in 2011. The group found time to make a second album of their own, 2012's The Crossing, but between their work with Bradley on the albums Victim of Love (2013), Changes (2016), and Black Velvet (2018) and the individual members' work with their other groups, it was years before Brenneck was able to take the group back to the studio for an album of their own. In 2021, the Menahan Street Band rewarded their fans' patience with their third LP, The Exciting Sounds of the Menahan Street Band, which once again showed off their wide range of influences and impressive instrumental skills. ~ Mark Deming