"Sweet" Charles Sherrell (born Charles Emanuel Sherrell, March 8, 1943) is an American bassist known for recording and performing with
James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the honor ...
.
Biography
Born in
Nashville, Tennessee, Sherrell began his career playing drums with fellow Nashville residents
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most ...
and
Billy Cox, practicing at a club a block from Hendrix's residence. Sherrell learned to play the guitar by washing the car (a
Jaguar
The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus '' Panthera'' native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the largest cat species in the Americas and the th ...
) of
Curtis Mayfield in exchange for guitar lessons. Sherrell soon began teaching himself to play the bass after buying one from a local pawn shop for $69, which led him to join Johnny Jones & The King Kasuals Band,
Aretha Franklin's backing group.
Sherrell joined
James Brown's band in August 1968, replacing
Tim Drummond
Timothy Lee Drummond (20 April 1940 – 10 January 2015) was an American musician from Canton, Illinois. Drummond's primary instrument was bass guitar and he toured and recorded with many notable artists, including Conway Twitty, Bob Dylan, James ...
after Drummond contracted
hepatitis in Vietnam. He played on some of Brown's most famous recordings of the late 1960s, including the #1 R&B hits "
Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud", "
Mother Popcorn", and "
Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" and more. Brown credited him with being his first bassist to incorporate playing techniques such as thumping on the strings that were adopted by other players, including
Bootsy Collins
William Earl "Bootsy" Collins (born October 26, 1951) is an American bass guitarist and singer.
Rising to prominence with James Brown in the early 1970s, and later with Parliament-Funkadelic, Collins established himself as one of the leading n ...
.
[Brown, James, and Bruce Tucker (1986). ''James Brown: The Godfather of Soul'', 198. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.] In the 1970s, Sherrell rejoined Brown and performed with
The J.B.'s
The J.B.'s (sometimes punctuated The JB's or The J.B.s) was the name of James Brown's band from 1970 through the early 1980s. On records the band was sometimes billed under alternate names such as Fred Wesley and the JBs, The James Brown Soul T ...
. He later played with
Al Green
Albert Leornes Greene (born April 13, 1946), better known as Al Green, is an American singer, songwriter, pastor and record producer best known for recording a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including " Take Me to the River", ...
and
Maceo & All the King's Men. He played bass on Beau Dollar's Who knows, Marva Whitney's and Lyn Collins album. He sang on a few of Maceo Parkers albums. He also released some recordings with the band Past Present & Future with friends Wade Conklin, Sam Pugh, Ted Hughes, Gail Whitefield, Thomas Smith and James Nixon and he recorded under the name Sweet Charles, including his first solo album, Sweet Charles: ''For Sweet People'', on James Brown's label
People Records and the Sweet Charles Sherrell ''Universal Love'' album in 2017.
References
funky-stuff.com
External links
sweetcharlessherrell.com
- official website
Discography at waxpoetics.com
1943 births
Living people
African-American guitarists
American funk bass guitarists
American male bass guitarists
American rhythm and blues bass guitarists
James Brown Orchestra members
James Brown vocalists
The J.B.'s members
Musicians from Memphis, Tennessee
Guitarists from Tennessee
20th-century American guitarists
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