SXSW Live Shot: Charles Bradley

Outside: Chaos, desperation to get inside a small venue down a winding, out-of-the-way path in Austin’s historic Rainey Street district. Inside Clive Bar: Love, light, joy.

Charles Bradley, soul of America, 3.17.15 (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

A man beams onstage, crucifix glittering from a chain against a black mock turtleneck. A threepiece rhythm section augmented by two horns and keyboards cooks like some blessed amalgam of Booker T. & the MGs at Muscle Shoals. The throng outside wants in.

They want to touch the hem of the garment of Earth’s Last Soul Singer.

Thanks to the beautiful Soul of America documentary, everyone now knows the tragedy-unto-triumph that is Charles Bradley. He arrived destitute at classic soul powerhouse Daptone Records near retirement age, wanting to make his own music after a lifetime as a short order cook and James Brown impersonator. He wanted a better way to support his aging mother.

All that comes out when he grips a microphone and opens lungs filled with pure, unfiltered emotion.

Menahan Street Band guitarist Thomas Brenneck, who sets Bradley’s life to music, is more Teenie Hodges than Steve Cropper, offering a sole flight of stuttering, Hendrixian fuzz-wah fancy mid-set. Still, it’s the onetime teen who slept on subways, Bradley, offering the power. He drops to his knees and wails of his “Heartaches and Pain,” how “The World (Is Going Up in Flames),” bemoaning “Trouble in the Land.”

Sweet benediction from one man’s sorrow. Soul music doesn’t come more real.

Complete SXSW Music coverage at austinchronicle.com/sxsw/music