Curtis Harding – (2014) Soul Power
Harding was born on June 11, 1979, in Saginaw, Michigan. His father was a mechanic, and his mother, Dorothy, was a gospel singer. He and his five siblings were raised as Mennonites. They moved to Alabama when he was three, and then to Arizona, California, Texas, and other parts of the United States. His family had no permanent residence until they settled in Atlanta, Georgia, when he was 14.
His mother toured in a van, stopping to sing in churches and work at homeless shelters. Although he originally aspired to be a professional athlete, Harding grew up immersed in his mother's music, performing occasionally as a backup singer until he was 15. His family stayed—sometimes for months at a time—in communities with churches of every faith tradition. Harding's sister, an amateur rapper, introduced him to secular music. Harding told The Austin Chronicle that growing up with older people—his father is 27 years older than his mother—gave him an early sense of maturity: "My goal as a kid was to be an old man. I wanted to be that old man sitting on the porch."
Harding describes his genre as "slop 'n' soul," combining soul music with blues, gospel, psychedelia, R&B, and rock. "Slop" symbolizes Southern culture ("that's what you feed to pigs"), and soul represents the music of his youth. "Soul is an experience," Harding told GQ magazine in 2017. "It can be in the way you dress, the way you talk, the way you sit in a chair. It's a feeling you can convey to someone with whatever you do."
Besides his mother, Harding has said his influences include Mahalia Jackson, MC Lyte, Bob Dylan, Albert King, the Everly Brothers, and Ronnie Dyson. In 2015, Michael Hann of The Guardian called Harding and Leon Bridges "the new stars of classic soul."
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