Verwandte Artikel zu I Am Charlie Wilson

I Am Charlie Wilson - Softcover

Wilson, Charlie

 
9781476790084: I Am Charlie Wilson
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1476790086 ISBN 13: 9781476790084
Verlag: 37 Ink, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

The long-awaited New York Times bestselling memoir of seven-time Grammy-nominated artist Charlie Wilson, the iconic R&B and Funk singer-songwriter-producer and former lead singer of The Gap Band—interwoven with his recollections of collaborating with fellow artists such as Stevie Wonder, Kanye West, and Snoop Dogg.

Recognized the world over for his distinct voice and timeless hits spanning a career of nearly half a century, Charlie Wilson is one of the most celebrated musicians of his generation. So it took friends and family by surprise when he checked into rehab and revealed that he had been not only homeless, but also helpless.

Here is the riveting story of how love and faith carried him through not only his addiction, but also prostate cancer. Here, too, is the story of his work in the music business, including a career resurgence that saw collaborations with some of the most sought-after artists of today, including Pharrell and Justin Timberlake.

Now over twenty years sober, Wilson recounts a life filled with vertiginous highs and heartbreaking lows. His is a story of triumph over adversity, courage in the face of extreme hardship, and love when all else is lost. It is a tale of the last sixty years in social and pop culture history, and one that will stay with you for years to come.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Charlie Wilson is an American R&B/soul music legend who has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards, including Best R&B Album for “Uncle Charlie” and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for “There Goes My Baby.” Sober for nineteen years, Wilson signed with Jive in 2004 after landing his first No. 1 Billboard Urban AC hit in 2000, “Without You.” Recently he has released songs such as “All of My Love,” which features Smokey Robinson, as well as “Forever Valentine.” Wilson averages seventy-five to one hundred shows a year between concert tours, festivals, and private events, while also devoting his time to charity work as a spokesperson for the Prostate Cancer Foundation. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife.

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I Am Charlie Wilson Chapter 1 Becoming Charlie Wilson
My daddy was a preacher with that Bible-thumping, Southern Baptist fire deep in his bones. That early-Sunday-morning vigor gave him wings; he’d fly all over that pulpit and all through the church, crowing through the pews and hopping over laps, the Word dripping from his tongue. That man could jump three or four feet in the air, and by the time he made it back down, people were falling out and shouting. I’m not going to lie: my daddy’s hollering and screaming scared me. The way the congregants of the Church of God in Christ in Tulsa, Oklahoma, would jump in the rhythm and work themselves into a frenzy was confusing. Alarming. Addictive.

I was about four years old when I said, “I want to do that.” My father happily obliged me, seeing as my oldest brother, Ronnie, and later my sister, Loretta, both gave up their position as the good pastor’s warm-up act when they turned twelve and got a little too much preteen angst to be bothered. I had no problems handling the gig.

I took my cues from my father.

Oscar Wilson was a boy preacher. A prodigy. At just thirteen years old, he took off from his home in Lehigh, Oklahoma, in the dead of night with nothing but a small suitcase and a Bible, chasing behind God’s voice and a light that lit his footpath through the pitch dark. The Lord had spoken to him—told him to get on the first train coming and ride it through the countryside until He told him where to get off. The average teenager may have thought he was going slowly, surely mad, following behind a voice that insisted he leave all he knew and deposit himself on a locomotive, destination unknown. But when my father heard the calling, he listened. He ended up a few stops down that stretch of railroad track, in a small town with a huge, empty field God directed him to. When he arrived there sans a chaperone, the people there said, “What’s your name?”

“Oscar Wilson,” I’m told he replied.

“Wilson, huh,” one man stated. “What’s your daddy’s name?”

“Dave Wilson,” my father answered.

“Boy, you Dave Wilson’s son?” another man asked.

“Yessir,” my father answered quickly, understanding the cachet this carried in this town among its people, both of which were foreign to him. My grandfather, Dave, was somewhat of a pistol. Literally. I’m told that he was a full-blooded Indian with a hot temper and an itchy trigger finger. Word has it that he once shot the town sheriff and got away with it, and that he was known for lying in the road with his Winchester rifle, waiting for someone to say something sideways to him. After that incident with the sheriff, no one ever did. His reputation preceded him. “Dave’s lying across the road with that Winchester,” they’d warn anyone who approached. “Be careful.”

So when my father showed up talking about preaching, the townspeople, either impressed or out of fear, happily obliged him, strange as his intentions were. “Where you going to preach?” they asked him.

“Right in that field over there,” he stated matter-of-factly. “That’s where God told me to preach.”

They made my father a little platform and strung up some lights for him so that the people could see him. He preached to a few people on the first night and to double that number the second night, and bit by bit, hundreds and hundreds of people showed up to hear the boy preacher. He was answering God’s calling, and the people were getting saved. An evangelist, my father preached all around the country for most of his years on this here earth.

I honed my stage presence and singing performances in the back room of my childhood home, in front of the mirror, where I would mimic my daddy and my mama’s church preaching and praise. When people see me whirling across the stage with all that infectious energy and ask me where I learned to perform, without hesitation, I give that credit to my father. When he was in the pulpit, Daddy would sing and shout all kinds of things, like, “Throw your hands in the air!” and “Say yeah!” while my mother was over there getting down on that piano, whipping him and the entire congregation into a frenzy. Those are move-the-crowd standards that I tend to shout out during my concerts, even today, but I’ve been working on and perfecting my high-energy stage exploits for a lifetime. It wasn’t a thing for my family to open the door and see four-year-old me wrapped in one of my mother’s robes, my father’s shoes flopping off of my tiny feet, flying through the air, landing in front of a mirror: “He’s a mind regulator and a mind fixer and a burden bearer!” I’d be shouting, jumping, twisting, squalling, rearing back, and playing the air piano, all at the same time. My parents would take a gander at the dramatics in that back room and just shake their heads. “Boy, we got our hands full with this one,” they’d say, laughing. Of course, because our house was deeply religious, it wasn’t strange to anyone that a four-year-old was preaching and jumping and shouting at his own reflection. It was expected.

There were more dramatics on Sunday when I put my routine into action at the church. Dress code: blue gabardine suit jacket with matching shorts and bow tie. The song: “When They Ring the Golden Bells.” Nerves: nonexistent. There was no reason to be scared; we grew up in the church, quite literally, spending at least three days out of the week, sometimes more, learning both the Bible and how to be. At any point in time, you could be standing up in front of the entire Sunday school to recite Bible verses you learned in class, or playing a baby lamb in the Nativity play at Christmas, or spending the entire Saturday with your church friends and their parents, doing good works out in the community or dancing and playing at the congregation’s picnic. Being in front of one another, fellowshipping and growing, is what we kids did in the church, and everybody embraced you, no matter what you did or how you did it. Even if you couldn’t sing or you got a few of the words in that verse jumbled, everybody would get up on their feet and clap for you so that you knew you were loved, and when there is love, there is no guard—no wall. You show up, open your mouth, and sing. Of course, it helped, too, that my mother insisted we Wilson kids were the best singers. But really, everybody—the crooners and the croakers—could stand up in front of a microphone and be made to feel as if they’d turned the place out. There was nothing to get nervous about at all. Plus, when it came time for my solo, Mama had already practiced the song with me, and on top of that, I was on a mission: my father delivered a powerful sermon every Sunday and it was my job to make sure the spirit was high and everybody within range of the sound of my voice was in full-on shout mode. My voice may have been sweet and pure and the scab on my knee may have betrayed just how little and new I was, but that old soul deep in my bones had crept up through my center mass and into my throat and was waiting there like a revving race car at the starting line. My mom was sitting at the big upright piano, with my siblings and me standing off to the side of her. “It’s time to sing, baby,” she said, nodding at me.

Let me tell you, when she put that microphone in my hand? I took off—headed straight for the pulpit, where the preachers and deacons were. And when I rounded that corner and saw my daddy, he stood up and then everybody else did, too, and I knew...

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Verlag
37 Ink
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1476790086
ISBN 13 
9781476790084
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales
sales@vanditmar.nl

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