Burke should have been a towering figure on the order of Otis Redding or James Brown. Based on historical milemarkers, he was. Except that he wasn’t; history, circumstance and the business—the very things he could so effortlessly render moot the second he opened his mouth—conspired against him even as he enjoyed a long career and got endless dap from his slightly younger peers, the Rolling Stones, the Blues Brothers and the rock luminaries listed above.
In 1961, Burke’s scored his first and biggest hit for Atlantic, “Just Out of Reach,” penned by V.F. Stewart and made famous by Patsy Cline. A black man singing country with a gospel quaver; modest as it sounds today, this fusion was key in setting Stax on the road to eternal victory. Or, at the very least, its success convinced Atlantic that this crazy little studio down in Memphis was worth distributing nationally.
