In August 1966, Wilson Pickett released The Exciting Wilson Pickett. It did more than just live up to its title—it made him. His third LP included four crossover hits, including “Land of a Thousand Dances” and “In the Midnight Hour,” and firmly established him as one of the premier soul and R&B belters of the time.
Some four months or so later (on January 1, 1967, to be precise) Wilson released The Wicked Pickett, and it more than lived up to its name. Indeed, it may as well have been called The More Exciting Wilson Pickett, and this despite the fact that it spawned only two hits, one of them the iconic “Mustang Sally.”
Both LPs were recorded at FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where his co-musicians included members of that studio’s legendary house band, the Swampers. But whereas it took him almost a year to record The Exciting Mr. Pickett, he only spent two days recording The Wicked Pickett. Which may or may not have anything to do with the startling and rarely remarked upon distinction between the two albums.
On The Exciting Mr. Pickett, the singer sounds almost restrained (by Pickett’s live wire standards). On The Wicked Pickett, the “hard soul” titan’s vocals are positively galvanizing. He doesn’t just sing; he takes the words in his teeth and shakes them until they scream. Except Pickett is the one screaming. He screams a lot.
Compare the screams per song between the two LPs. On tunes like “In the Midnight Hour,”“Barefootin’,” “Mercy Mercy,” and“634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)” Wilson—when compared to The Wicked Pickett—is on his best behavior. And there are others. He does some screaming, but mostly on “She’s So Good to Me.”
Not so on The Wicked Pickett. He lets loose, gets down, and screams his way through a collection of songs that may not be as iconic as those on his previous album, but are certainly more hair-raising. If you’ve heard his 1968 collaboration with Duane Allman on “Hey Jude,” you know what I mean.
Pickett sounds like he’s trying to wake Jesus from a heavy nap. Or stepping on nails. Not only does he top some of rock, soul, and R&B’s greatest screamers—think Little Richard, Paul McCartney, Janis Joplin, and Joe Cocker—he buries them.
I shouldn’t overstate my case. There are songs on The Wicked Pickett, most of them on the B-Side, where he gives his shriek a rest. Otherwise, screaming is his default mode. He screams between words, he screams his way through words, he screams over words and under words. He screams, and then he screams again, and then he screams one more time, and the first scream is just a practice swing. If he could scream on top of a scream, he would do it.
He’s the screamingest son of a bitch ever to walk the earth. He even delivers a blood-curdler on his excellent, soul-drenched cover of Bobby Hebb’s 1966 soft rock hit “Sunny.”
Maybe he should have called the album The Screaming Wilson Pickett.
I haven’t counted the number of times he screams—or shouts interjections, sometimes sly, sometimes downright lewd—but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover The Wicked Pickett has the highest per capita screams of any album in history. (Your screamo types don’t count—whiteboy teenage angst is just annoying.)
I don’t know what changed between The Exciting Wilson Pickett and The Wicked Pickett, but it marks one of the most remarkable vocal transformations I’ve ever heard.
And have I mentioned that he has an impeccable sense of timing and can hang onto a word like a mountaineer clinging to a cliff? That he can even turn a should-be novelty song like the upbeat “Ooh Poo Pa Doo” into a must-listen through the use of cries of “Oh… yeah now” and “Lord have mercy!” And of course, there are the screams, screams that will set off your car alarm—when it’s parked seventeen blocks away.
“Mustang Sally” has a relatively small scream footprint, but he sure does say “huh” a lot—probably because he’s disgusted because here he’s gone and bought his girl a straight-off-the-Detroit-assembly-line 1965 Ford Mustang and she won’t even let him ride in it! He wants her to slow that Mustang down, but why? So he can make a running leap into it? Everybody knows the song, but that descending horn line is worth a mention, as is that mean guitar that keeps interjecting like a fella trying to get a word in.
Of 1978’s Funky Situation, Christgau wrote, “What’s more, Pickett is singing again—rarely does he resort to the random scream.” Like screaming is a bad thing, or there’s anything random about them.
Take “New Orleans,” a super-charged, horn-infested salute to America’s True Sin City on which he screams “Look Out!” while a saxophone wails and wails. “Sunny” maintains its slow tempo, but Pickett adds deep-dish soul and wails in exactly the right places over a killer horn section and some tasteful (and tasty) guitar.
The very up-tempo “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” perfectly illustrates the difference between The Exciting Mr. Pickett and The Wicked Pickett. On the latter, he screams as if he fell into a pit of punji sticks.” The mid-tempo “She Ain’t Gonna Do Right” has the soul baked in—it’s all screams, great backing vocals, and collard greens.
“Knock on Wood” is definitive from its iconic horn opening; Pickett doesn’t utter a single stevedore howl, but his every syllable is a punch that feels like a kiss. A classic and a definite throwback to his previous LP. “Time Is on My Side” features a monologue, a dynamite six-string solo, and once again, he gets the whole way through the song without stubbing his toe. He just romances you into a puddle.
”Up Tight Good Woman,” same deal—a crawl of a tempo, a heart-to-heart monologue, and Pickett’s woman doesn’t even need a pretty face—he just wants one he can come home to. And once again, not a scream in hearing distance.
The straight-up R&B number “You Left the Water Running” isn’t likely to win him any converts—there’s simply nothing happening except a great backbeat. On “Three Time Loser,” Pickett’s voice is all grit and grits, Spooner Oldham plays some primal honky-tonk piano, and the horn arrangement actually comes close to outdoing Wilson’s screaming. Fast-paced closer “Nothing You Can Do” lets loose, and Wilson serves up some guttural noises, but he can’t quite transmogrify good to great.
Gospel music may have been Wilson Pickett’s abiding love, and where he got his start, but like other musical apostates (Jerry Lee Lewis may be the ultimate example), he had the devil in him. He once said, “One of the secretaries at Atlantic Records caught me pinching one of the other secretaries on the butt one morning. She said, ‘My, you sure are wicked.’”
And on The Wicked Pickett, he sounds wicked indeed. It’s all in the scream, brothers and sisters. All in the scream.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
