Song of the Day 4/24: Charles Bradley, “Changes”

When Charles Bradley was discovered by Daptone Records around the turn of the millennium, he was nearly 50 years old and performing a James Brown impersonation as Black Velvet. (Earlier he billed himself the Screaming Eagle of Soul.) Once he hooked up with Daptone’s Tom Brenneck he became an international success, partly because Brenneck steered him to songs he could sing with the kind of conviction he brings to this 1972 Black Sabbath power ballad, recorded live in a studio at the Toronto Star. Bradley died in 2017 of stomach cancer. He was 69.