Great idea for a book and really well executed. A thoroughly good read. Highly recommended. .

Wilson Pickett was a tough, handsome impeccably dressed 60’s soul star who produced some seminal soul music such as In the Midnight Hour and Mustang Sally. His life reads like an epic tragedy. His soul, his singing and his passion was always raw and brash. He helped to establish the sound of Southern soul while working with the best session musicians in the business – both white and black.

I am amazed that there is no other biography of Wilson Pickett’s life. Tony Fletcher has interviewed members of the singer's family, friends and music partners to produce a well-researched and riveting account of his life by combining his tortuous personal story with the history of black music which is also deftly intertwined with the explosive era of the American civil rights movement.

Pickett’s life was both epic and tragic. He was combative and often violent and was well known for being difficult to work with. In the end he was his own worst enemy. Depression, alcohol and drugs, gun violence took its toll and Tony Fletcher recounts his sad decline while pulling no punches.

Great biography of soul singer, Wilson Pickett. I didn't know that much about Wilson before reading this book, other than I know I liked his music. He played a big part in the music world and in the lives of other musicians. A great read if you like the music of Wilson Picket, music of that era or just music in general.

Wilson Pickett may have been his own worst enemy — as Tony Fletcher shows time and again in his new biography, In the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Wilson Pickett — but the man surrounded himself with great guitarists.
Pickett, who died 11 years ago last week, was probably the '60s greatest crossover male soul singer outside the Motown stable. Hits like "In the Midnight Hour," "Mustang Sally," "Funky Broadway" and "Engine Number 9" had guitar parts that captured the ears of rock and pop audiences. And the array of impressive guitarists who collaborated with Pickett makes for one of the book's most interesting subthreads.
They include:
• Steve Cropper — who produced, co-wrote and played guitar key early hits "In the Midnight Hour" and "634-5780 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)" at Stax Records in Memphis.
• Reggie Young — the famed Muscle Shoals guitarist who played on Pickett's albums I'm in Love and The Midnight Mover.
• Bobby Womack — a long-term collaborator who both played guitar for Pickett and wrote or co-wrote many songs for him, including "I'm in Love" and "I'm a Midnight Mover."
• Duane Allman — who suggested Pickett cover the Beatles' "Hey Jude," then played a screaming counterpoint to his vocals in place of the Fab Four's "na-na-na-na" chorus. (Pickett nicknamed "Skydog," a name that worked its way into the lyrics of the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar.")
• Dennis Coffey — the funk legend who played wah-wah guitar on the Temptations' "Psychedelic Shack," "Cloud Nine" and "Ball of Confusion" before recording his own million-selling record, "Scorpio."
• Marc Ribot — who played one tour with Pickett during the '80s before before going on to a wide-ranging career that would see him collaborating with musicians ranging from Tom Waits to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss to John Zorn.
Pickett even crossed paths with Jimi Hendrix, who backed him on "In the Midnight Hour" as a member of King Curtis' Kingpins at a 1966 Atlantic Records party.
Fans generally familiar with the arc of the singer's life and career — his temper and ego and appetite for alcohol and drugs shortened his career and likely led to an early death at age 64 — won't find many revelations in Fletcher's book. But Reggie Young provides one when he talks about playing with Bobby Womack on Pickett's 1968 album The Midnight Mover.
"Now I'm playing like Bobby Womack," Young tells Fletcher. Young continued in that style when he moved to Nashville and played on records like Waylon Jennings’ “Luckenbach, Texas”; Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind"; Kenny Rogers’s “Lucille"; and Merle Haggard's “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink,” “Pancho and Lefty,” and “That’s the Way Love Goes.”
Pickett's influence obviously was felt farther and more directly than that ("In the Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally" were standard repertoire for any garage band coming up during the '60s, for instance). Fletcher's biography captures that as well as the personal tragedy in a story that's long overdue to be told in this kind of depth.

This is an excellent biography about a singer that you truly felt your soul touched when he sang, and I still do when I hear one of his many hits: In the midnight hour, Mustang Sally, Land of 1000 Dances, to name a few there are many more and they are all outstanding songs. The author takes you back to Alabama, his childhood. With memories from relatives and friends. You get a look at his life as a young boy picking cotton and hunting, and fishing until he can make the move to Detroit with his father. One line in the book was their childhood was not difficult because he and his siblings did not know anything different. It is true but the author shows you how his childhood would affect his relationship with people when he got older, musicians, friends, women, siblings, and then anyone else who he came into contact with. He also takes you into his gospel singing and the people who helped him. Then with a group called the Falcons which actually had a couple of good songs on Atlantic label. When he gets his break you see how his voice is truly his instrument and would not only allow him to work with some of the top names in the business, but also travel around the world. During his day he was the guy. The last part of the book is sad but true about a lot of people. This is truly a good book about a great singer and his rise to stardom.