Entertainment

Singer Sledge Remembered at Funeral for Talent, Kindness

Published

9 years ago

April 22, 2015

In this March 14, 2005 file photo, Percy Sledge accepts his award during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York. Sledge was remembered for phenomenal talent and extraordinary kindness during a funeral service on Tuesday, April 21, 2015, in Baker, La. Sledge, who recorded the classic 1966 soul ballad “When a Man Loves a Woman,” died, April 14, at the age of 74. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson, File)

BAKER, La. (AP) — Percy Sledge was remembered for phenomenal talent and extraordinary kindness during a Tuesday funeral service marked by warm reminiscences from fellow musicians, family members and friends he made during a five-decade career that launched with his first and biggest hit, “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

“Heaven’s choir just got a whole lot more soul,” said Rev. Dane Blankenship, a Baton Rouge area pastor and hospice chaplain who spent time with Sledge during his final days.

Sledge, an Alabama native who lived much of his life with second wife Rosa in Baton Rouge, died last week at age 74 after battling liver cancer.

Upbeat spirituals from a trio of gospel singers opened and closed the three-hour service, billed as a celebration of Sledge’s life, at Bethany Church in Baker, near Baton Rouge. Sledge’s body lay in an open casket, adorned on the outside with musical notes and a treble clef. His name and likeness were emblazoned in black on the white interior lid.

Preachers from the Muscle Shoals, Alabama, area, where Sledge’s signature song was recorded in 1966, read Bible verses. Performers included his daughter Sanricca, who sang a Whitney Houston song, and son Howell, who sang a hymn.

Testimonials came from his children and from friends he made inside and outside of the music business.

“There’s not a kinder person in the world. There’s not a more giving person in the world and there’s not a smile like that in the world anywhere,” said Alabama record producer David Johnson, who met Sledge in 1966 and worked on a recent gospel album with him.

“I’ll love him until I’m up there in heaven with him.”

Longtime R&B and gospel singer Dorothy Moore sang a song about departing: “When you hear of my home-going, don’t worry ’bout me … I’m just another soldier, oh yeah, going home.”

Little Rock, Arkansas, car dealer Frank Fletcher recalled a decades-old friendship with Sledge and said he asked the singer to appear every time he opened a business. “I bought 13 car dealerships I really didn’t need because I got him to come every time.”

Sledge’s hits included “Warm and Tender Love” and “Take Time to Know Her.” But “When a Man Loves a Woman” — his first hit — became a standard that sustained his long touring career in the U.S., Europe and South Africa and led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was the first No. 1 hit from Muscle Shoals, and the first gold record for Atlantic Records.

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Entertainment

O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

Published

1 day ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo

By Post Staff

Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.

At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.

Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).

He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”

The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.

It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.

He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.

He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.

Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.

Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.

In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.

When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.

Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.

“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.

“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”

“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.

“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”

Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.

He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.

Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.