Rock-tober: Day 23

Back when I was still at Auburn, one popular hangout was my buddy John's house. Unlike the rest of us students living in dorms, trailers, or tiny efficiency apartments, John somehow scored an actual "house", house.

One evening a large group of us were all over for one of our frequent dinner parties. Sometime during the course of the evening, I stepped away from the party and wandered into the unoccupied living room. "When a Man Loves a Woman" started playing on the stereo and I remember just standing there transfixed, listening to the lyrics and the music.

I must have been a curious sight because another one of John's guests was intrigued by the scene of me staring off into space with an R&B classic playing in the background. She asked me what was on my mind, and I honestly can't remember what I said.

Back in the mid-'60s, Percy Sledge was performing one night at a club in Sheffield, Alabama. At the time, he was feeling pretty low about a recent breakup with his girl and was having trouble focusing on the performance. On stage, he turned to his band and asked them to play something bluesy and slow. They started, and after a pause, Percy just belted out what was on his heart. The result was a totally ad-libbed outpouring of himself.

It struck a nerve with a lot of people because when it was released as a single in 1966 it went all the way to number 1 on both the Billboard 100 and R&B charts. Good music, as I've said is timeless, and when Michael Bolton released his cover of the song a quarter-century later, it earned him a #1 record as well as a Grammy.

Back at my buddy John's dinner party, the two wandering guests eventually returned to the group. But that simple exchange led to longer, more memorable conversations in the following months. To make a long story short, I married her. Did we get some mojo off this classic? Maybe. It's a cool story anyway.