![]() Poull Brien first met Bradley when he directed the music video for "The World (Is Going Up In Flames)". In the spring of 2012, Soul of America, a documentary directed by Poull Brien, debuted at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. No Time for Dreaming & Soul of America (2011–2012) īradley performing at Traumzeit-Festival in Duisburg in 2013.īrenneck and Bradley chose ten of these recordings to be released as Bradley's debut album No Time for Dreaming in 2011. After writing several songs, Daptone released some of these initial recordings on vinyl starting in 2002. Bradley asked that the band simply perform while he made up lyrics on the spot. Roth introduced Bradley to his future producer, Daptone artist Tom Brenneck (then the songwriter and guitarist for The Bullets, and later for Menahan Street Band) who invited Bradley to his band's rehearsal. While performing as "Black Velvet", he was eventually discovered by Gabriel Roth (better known as " Bosco Mann"), a co-founder of Daptone Records. During this time, Bradley experienced more difficulties, including almost dying in a hospital after having an allergic reaction to penicillin, and, in a separate episode, awaking at his mother's house to a commotion as police and ambulances were arriving to the scene of his brother's murder, just down the road from there. It was there he began making a living moonlighting as a James Brown impersonator in local clubs under the name "Black Velvet". ![]() ![]() In the mid-1990s, Bradley's mother called him and asked him to move back in with her in Brooklyn so she could get to know him. He earned extra money doing James Brown performances, where he used such stage names as the Screaming Eagle of Soul, Black Velvet and even James Brown Jr.Ĭareer in music Black Velvet and initial recordings (1996–2010) There, Bradley worked odd jobs and played small shows for 20 years. He lived in upstate New York, Seattle, Canada and Alaska before settling in California in 1977. īradley worked in Maine as a cook for ten years, and then decided to head west, hitchhiking across the country. His bandmates were later drafted into the Vietnam War, and the act never re-formed. He overcame his stage fright (when a crew member pushed him through the curtains onto the stage) and performed five or six times with a band. A co-worker told him he looked like James Brown and asked if he could sing he was at first shy but then admitted that he could. Later, he enlisted in Job Corps which eventually led him to Bar Harbor, Maine to train as a chef. When he was fourteen, Bradley ran away from home to escape poor living conditions-his bedroom was in a basement with a sand floor-and lived on the streets during the day and slept nights in subway cars for two years. Bradley was so inspired by the performance that he began to practice mimicking Brown's style of singing and stage mannerisms at home. In 1962, his sister took him to the Apollo Theater to see James Brown perform. At age eight, his mother returned, and took him to live with her in Brooklyn, New York. ![]() Zelt-Musik-Festival 2016 in Freiburg, GermanyĪbandoned by his mother at eight months of age, Bradley was raised by his maternal grandmother in Gainesville, Florida.
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