Soulful Singer Percy Sledge Dies

African-American soulful singer, Percy Sledge, who rose from being a part-time singer and hospital nurse to lasting fame with his memorable songs including the super classic “When a Man Loves a Woman,” died Tuesday in Louisiana at the age of 74.

According to the Associated Press, The coroner for East Baton Rouge Parish, Dr. William “Beau” Clark, reported that Sledge died early Tuesday morning, about an hour after midnight of natural causes in hospice care.

“When a Man Loves a Woman”, his signature song, was Sledge’s debut single and a No. 1 hit in 1966. an almost unbearably heartfelt ballad with a resonance he never approached again.

According to Sledge, the song’s inspiration came from his departing girlfriend who left him for a modelling career after he was laid off from a construction job in late 1965. He would later give all the song writing credits to bassist Calvin Lewis and organist Andrew Wright helped him with the song. “When a Man Loves a Woman” reached No. 1 in the U.S. and went on to become an international hit. The song was also hit twice in the UK, reaching No. 4 in 1966 and, on reissue, peaked at No. 2 in 1987.

Sledge was born on November 25, 1940 in Leighton, Alabama. He reportedly worked in agricultural jobs in the fields in Leighton before getting a job as an orderly at Colbert County Hospital in Alabama. Through the mid-1960s, he combined his music love with the Esquires Combo on weekends, while working hospital jobs during the week. “When a Man Loves a Woman” was re-released after being featured in Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War film “Platoon” in 1987 and reached No. 2 in Britain. In the 1990s, soul singer Michael Bolton topped the charts in with a cover version and Rolling Stone magazine later ranked it No. 53 on its list of the greatest songs of all time.

Recognizable by his wide, gap-toothed smile, Sledge had a handful of other hits between 1966 and 1968, including “Warm and Tender Love,” ”It Tears Me Up,” ”Out of Left Field” and “Take Time to Know Her.” He returned to the charts in 1974 with “I’ll Be Your Everything.”

Percy Sledge recalled recording the song in the 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals: “When I came into the studio, I was shaking like a leaf. I was scared. It was the same melody that I sang when I was out in the fields. I just wailed out in the woods and let the echo come back to me.”

While identified with the Muscle Shoals music scene, Sledge spent most of his career living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was inducted in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

Sledge had surgery for liver cancer in January 2014 but soon resumed touring.

Sledge also recorded chart songs with “I’ll Be Your Everything” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” during the 1970s, and he was an international concert favorite throughout the world, especially in the Netherlands, Germany and Africa. He reportedly averaged 100 concerts a year in South Africa.