Bobby Harden & The Soulful Saints
“One Night of the Week” /“Feels So Good”
How do you define a true Soul Man? With difficulty, given that so much is down to a certain mystical mojo. But if anyone knows one when they see him, it would be Stax legend Eddie Floyd, who has spent 60-plus years perfecting the role. When Bobby Harden joined the star-studded Blues Brothers Band in 2012 as one of two singers in support of Floyd, the elder Soul Man immediately recognized similar qualities in his understudy. “He was everything I’d been when I was younger,” said Floyd, who gracefully passed the torch after several tours tag-teaming on stage. “I always tell him. ‘I saw you, my man,’ and I said, ‘That’s it! I can go back to the house and rest!’”
You get the sense it will be many years until Harden makes a similar transition into retirement. The true Soul Man, after all, lives to work, recognizing that success don’t come knocking on the door with a gold-plated invite. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Harden was blessed with a voice to raise roofs, and after a stint in Houston attending college, headed up to New York City to pursue his passion. It wasn’t always easy, but years singing soul classics on the wedding band circuit sharpened that church-trained voice and polished his moves in the process; they also instilled in Bobby the necessary professionalism to not just survive, but thrive on a slow, yet inexorable, rise in reputation.
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