I learned today that Solomon Burke died. I had the chance to meet him some years ago at a fes­ti­val I was play­ing. He was fun­ny, engag­ing, and in a lot of ways the char­ac­ter you’d expect to meet if you’d read about him or his amaz­ing life.

His 2002 record Don’t Give Up on Me changed the way I think of and approach music. A lot of that had to do with the beau­ti­ful pro­duc­tion by Joe Hen­ry, but Solomon took an idea that could have made any oth­er record inter­est­ing and made it mag­i­cal. He had some hilar­i­ous sto­ries about how he and Joe got togeth­er to make that record, and he put a real­ly human and approach­able touch to the mem­o­ries I have of that record and that time in general.

I’ve only met him once, but I’ll miss hav­ing the King of Soul around.