James Carr – The Dark End of the Street

I was reading the Gregg Allman autobiography and he mentioned this song. When he had his first huge breakup with a girl in high school…he went to a cafe with a jukebox for days and played this song over and over. I can see why…it has the mood for that perfectly. I first heard it on a Percy Sledge album years ago but I had forgotten about it. Wonderful slow soul song.

This song was written by Chips Moman and Dan Penn in 30 minutes when they were at a DJ convention in Nashville. Dan Penn also delivered the harmonies on the original version of Carr on this song. I’ve said this before but when I see a title like this…I have to listen.

In 1969 this was covered in a Country-Soul style by The Flying Burrito Brothers on their classic The Gilded Palace of Sin album. Other artists to cover it include Aretha Franklin, Linda Ronstadt, Gregg Allman, and  Percy Sledge.

James Carr is the original artist that charted the song. The song peaked at #77 on the Billboard 100 in 1967. Both the Carr and Sledge versions are great and are very close to each other. James Carr recorded it in 1966 and Percy Sledge recorded it the next year when it was charting for Carr…1967.

I covered Carr a while back and he is worth looking into. The song that I covered was “Pouring Water On A Drowning Man.” The song lived up to that great title. Take a listen to his version and his catalog… a very underrated soul singer. It’s worth it. At one time he was mentioned along with Otis Redding and they had the same manager for a while. The guy had a great voice.

He lived in Memphis and was called  “the world’s greatest Soul Singer” but he had a bipolar disorder and that made it hard for him to tour because of the depression. Carr toured Japan in 1979 and stood motionless at the microphone as though in a hypnotic trance on many dates. He returned to Memphis, where he lived with his sister (in between institutionalizations), and spent much of the ’80s barely conscious of the world around him.

He did improve with medicine and in the 90s he did make an album, Take Me to the Limit, and in 94 he released another album Soul Survivor. Soon after he died of lung cancer in 2001.

Dan Penn: “Me and Chips were in a poker game, and we took a break and went back to our room. And there was a guitar and we started the song. I wrote it as far as I could and handed it to him and we finished it up really fast. It was maybe a year before James Carr recorded it. And the reason James Carr got it was because he was next. That’s the way they used to get the songs in Memphis, whoever was next got the next song.” James Carr, he had some great records but he was kind of an Otis sound-alike. But when he did ‘Dark End Of The Street’ I think he found his own voice. He never sounded like that again, I think he had some problems (Carr had a drug addiction). But he was one great singer. His record can’t be touched. The whole make-up of the record, it screams 1966. There’s something about that time that got https://youtu.be/tzcdNwIkmYAon that tape that I’ve never heard anybody get that close to.”

Dark End of the Street

At the dark end of the street
That’s where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don’t belong
Living in darkness to hide our wrong
You and me, at the dark end of the street
You and me

I know time is gonna take its toll
We’re have pay for the love we stole
It’s a sin and we know it’s wrong
Oh but our love keeps coming on strong
Steal away, to the dark end of the street, mmm mmm

They’re gonna find us
They’re gonna find us
They’re gonna find us, oh someday
You and me, at the dark end of the street
You and me

And when the daylight hour rolls around
And by chance we’re both downtown
If we should meet, just walk on by
Oh darling, please don’t cry

Tonight we’ll meet
At the dark end of the street

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

26 thoughts on “James Carr – The Dark End of the Street”

  2. he had a really good voice, at least based on this one, perfectly suited to that Memphis sound. I may have heard his name before but it didn’t really ring any bells for me. Sometime I need to go listen to what Linda R did with the song.

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  5. The first time I heard this was on Linda Ronstadt’s, “Heart Like a Wheel” album. Good background info on the song and Carr in particular. Appreciated getting to hear other versions of it. Carr’s and Sledge’s are a little slower tempo. It’s quite the torch song.

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    3. That might be where I first heard it as well. I thought it was New Riders of the Purple Sage, but I don’t see that they recorded it. It wasn’t the Flying Burrito Brothers version. I always thought of it along with “Long Black Veil” – similar in tone, though “Long Black Veil” is darker. I thought it was a country and western song until I heard the original. The incomparable Ry Cooder has also recorded it. His guitar sings the lyrics.

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