Solomon Burke, 1940-2010

Soul music lost one of its greats yesterday when the reverend Solomon Burke died of natural causes on a flight from Los Angeles to Amsterdam, where he was scheduled to perform a sold-out show. Best known for his hits “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” and “Cry to Me,” which he recorded for Atlantic Records in the mid-’60s, the Philadelphia-born, church-raised Burke was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame in 2001 and won a Grammy the next year, for Best Contemporary Blues Album, for his Don’t Give Up On Me. He was a gospel preacher and a trained mortician and he had 21 children and 90 grandchildren. There he is in the video clip above, singing the Don Gibson standard, “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” in Germany in 1987.