Solomon Burke in the studio with Elvis Costello
Photo: Fat Possum Records

Epitaph President Andy Kaulkin approached soul legend Solomon Burke after a gospel show in Portland last year and asked if he wanted to record a secular album for his Fat Possum imprint. The self-proclaimed King of Rock 'n' Soul was understandably skeptical.

"I thought he was representing a football team and he wanted me to be their mascot or something," said Burke. "I had no idea what a 'Fat Possum' was, except the ones I'd seen in the fields."

Burke took the meeting, though, and Kaulkin offered him a deal he couldn't refuse: record for me and I'll have the giants of the music industry write you amazing tunes.

"I asked, 'How are you going to do this?,' " Burke said, having heard all manner of empty promises in a four-decade, roller-coaster career. "Then, I asked, 'Where's the check?' "

When Kaulkin's check cleared, Burke knew he was for real. And when Burke found out Fat Possum's parent company was called Epitaph, well, this part-time mortician was definitely sold.

Kaulkin made good on his word, too. In fact, better than Burke could ever have imagined. The first secular album in five years from this 62-year-old hot dog manufacturer, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (2001) and bishop of his own Los Angeles church is called Don't Give up on Me (July 23). It boasts 11 previously unreleased or new songs written for Burke by Van Morrison, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and Nick Lowe.

Also contributing tracks are such songwriting legends as Dan Penn (co-author of soul classics like "Dark End of the Street" and "Do Right Woman"), Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil ("You've Lost That Loving Feeling," "Walking in the Rain"), and singer/songwriter Joe Henry, who also produced the album.

Rather than try to update Burke's sound by hooking him up with hot, young producers or pulling a Santana and pairing him with contemporary singers, Henry sprinted in the other direction. Even before he got the job he never thought he'd land ("They were talking with some very heavy hitters," he said), Henry urged Kaulkin not to try remaking Burke's image.

"Don't do a phony retro soul record," Henry counseled Kaulkin, admitting he'd have been more intimidated by producing Burke if he were a "smarter man."

To his surprise, Henry got the job without even meeting his hero. (But Burke said Henry later impressed him well enough by ordering pork chops with gravy and eggs for their first breakfast together.)

The producer, too, was true to his word, paring down the elegant arrangements to their barest bones and placing the spotlight firmly on Burke and his still amazingly subtle, rich voice. In the center of the sessions, improvising, writing new lyrics and nailing just about every song in two takes or less stood Burke, happy to take direction but clearly holding the experiment aloft on his considerable shoulders.

"I'm just waiting for the lawyers, waiting for the lawsuits," Burke joked about his original take on the all-star cast of songwriters' work. "I'm just waiting for all these people I haven't met to hear what I did to their songs and file some suits."

Burke needn't worry. The result sounds timeless, like a trip back to the early '60s era of soul superstars (and Burke contemporaries) such as Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and Wilson Pickett.

Aching songs of faith tested and the purity of a positive mind ("Don't Give up on Me," Waits' "Diamond in Your Mind") slow dance alongside soaring gospel meditations ("None of Us Are Free" featuring the Blind Boys of Alabama) and Henry's midnight blue, tortured love song, "Flesh and Blood." In an age when artists routinely take months to record albums, Burke, his longtime blind church organist Rudy Copeland and a backing band assembled by Henry took just three days to record and mix the entire album.

While Burke did not have the same pop impact as such peers as Redding and Pickett in the early '60s, his signature mix of country, soul, gospel and R&B, and lush, melodic ballads influenced everyone from the Small Faces to the Rolling Stones, who covered his hits "Cry to Me" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love."

Like Aretha Franklin, Burke's use of gospel influence came from a personal space. He preached in his family's Philadelphia church and hosted a gospel radio show at age 7. He made his first gospel records in his teens and signed on to sing secular pop songs for Atlantic Records in 1960 at age 20, his biggest hit coming in 1969 with a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary."

His colorful past explains why so many artists were willing to pitch in. But, with the exception of Costello — who popped in on day three to walk the band through his tricky arrangement on "The Judgement" — none of the other star songwriters had met Burke. Yet somehow Henry said they were able to tap into aspects of the singer's personality that amazed even Burke, crafting songs that sound custom-made for his expressive, supple voice.

"I have 21 children and 63 grandchildren, and I believe that when you marry into a family, that's your family," Burke said, explaining his connection to Dylan's walking blues, "Stepchild." "That song is tapping into me, that's what's so phenomenal and how freaked out am I that these people knew something about me mentally and spiritually that they could write these songs."

"They're all terrific fans of his sensibility and style, and the structures of those classic soul songs by him and others are part of our DNA as writers," Henry explained.

The secret, Burke said, is "sometimes less is best. Joe Henry sat back and said, 'I don't want to mess this up.' He did not demand the control other producers would have. He said, 'Let it flow.' "

Realizing the magic they captured, Burke said he knows he and his band could never record this album again.

"It's impossible," he said. "Every one of these songs is the moment."

• Solomon Burke
• Bob Dylan
• Elvis Costello

Paul Simon
Photo: Lynn Goldsmith

Even as Aerosmith, Queen, Paul Simon, Michael Jackson, Steely Dan, Solomon Burke, the Flamingos and Ritchie Valens are being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, music-industry figures and fans are likely to have complaints about the absences in the class of 2001.

The bellyaching begins each year around December, when inductees are typically announced. "Where are the Stooges and Black Sabbath?" some say. "Aerosmith, but no New York Dolls?" say others. Still others may bemoan the absence of Can or Serge Gainsbourg. A select — some might posit deranged — few might even protest the absence of Napoleon XIV, the lunatic engineer behind the 1966 novelty hit "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" The necessarily mongrel, sprawling cultural experience known as rock and roll invites a multitude of opinions as to what constitutes the music's canon. But for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's the opinions of the hall's nominating committee that count. Every spring, the nominating committee, a sort of star chamber of influential music industry professionals — record executives, lawyers including veteran industry attorney Allen Grubman, managers such as Bruce Springsteen's Jon Landau, journalists including longtime scribe Dave Marsh and musicians such as the Patti Smith Group's Lenny Kaye — convene to evaluate potential nominees, who must have released their first record 25 years before the year of induction. Their choices form the ballot, which then goes to a larger group of 1,000 voters. "The nominating committee is now about 60 people; it started off as 20 people, and it's grown," said Seymour Stein, chairman of London-Sire Records, who has been president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since its 1986 inception and is currently the co-chairman of the nominating committee. "Rock and roll is an ever-changing, hybrid music, and the more viewpoints, the better. As many people as want to or can attend the meeting, and the others are e-mailed and we vote. "By process of elimination, we try to narrow the ballot down to about 15 artists. No one can be inducted without getting at least 50 percent of the vote," Stein said. "Generally, between five and seven inductees [are selected]." Stein, an avowed "doo-wop fanatic" who identifies heavily with the music of his youth, feels like there's "quite a bit of catch-up to do." He cites the Hollies, Brenda Lee, Conway Twitty, Gene Pitney, Percy Sledge, Chuck Willis and panoply of doo-wop acts such as the Five Satins ("In the Still of the Night") and the Penguins ("Earth Angel") as acts that should be full-fledged inductees. "I don't want to forget artists from the '50 and '60s, but not at the expense of worthwhile artists from the '70s," he said. "I don't want to sound like George Bush, but I don't want to see anyone left behind. But I really mean it, hence the difference." Stein does not predict that any artist, whether in 2001 or in future years, will ever sail into the hall the first year they are eligible, the way, say, the Beatles did in 1988, or Bruce Springsteen did in 1999. He cited a random selection of artists, from James Taylor to Earth, Wind & Fire to Gene Vincent to Parliament-Funkadelic to Joni Mitchell to the Bee Gees to the Velvet Underground, who waited a few, or many, years for induction. Monday night's inductees, Stein noted, are uniformly ones that took a few years to pass. "Aerosmith had been eligible for two years, Queen had been eligible for three years. Three of the acts getting in this year were eligible the first year [of the Hall's existence]: Ritchie Valens, Solomon Burke and the Flamingos." Queen's surviving members, incidentally, are mulling a reunion in the wake of the rock hall honor (see "Surviving Queen Members Mulling Reunion, Guitarist May Says"). For Aerosmith, their past eligibility — if not the induction itself — isn't weighing too heavily on their minds. "I'm not really thinking about that," singer Steven Tyler said. "When we heard we were up for it [two years ago], it was very surprising to begin with." "Do I even think that we should get in there now?" guitarist Joe Perry wondered aloud. "I don't know. It's not up to us.

"It just kinda feels weird, because there's a museum, and 'museum' sounds so stable and staid," he continued. "Everybody tries to pigeonhole everything. But I guess it's a good thing. A lot of people think it's a good thing, so we're happy to be there." As for disco and punk acts (like the Sex Pistols) that made their mark in 1976, Stein adopts a wait-and-see attitude on whether they'll make it to next year's ballot: "We're going to know in three or four months, so hold your horses." Stein does suggest, given that some voters perceive the uninducted likes of Darlene Love and the Crystals as mere instruments in the hands of producers, that some similarly perceived disco artists may meet a similar fate.

Robert Christgau, senior editor of the Village Voice, attended 1995's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and wrote an essay for the program regarding Al Green. He has never voted in the poll, but is charitable as to how the tastes of the nominating committee, the overwhelming majority of whom are veterans of the music business, influence induction. "This is an election," he said. "And the people who vote, including everyone who has been inducted, are obviously going to understand their own aesthetic better than they understand succeeding aesthetics. Therefore, people who embrace aesthetics that are already canonized will have an advantage over those who don't. That's just a process, and maybe it should be corrected for, but there's nothing inherently immoral or unfair about having, for instance, all the surviving members of the Orioles voting for who should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame." So in light of how the list of worthy inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seems to be backed up, it might be a few years after 2004 — 25 years after the release of the first hip-hop record, the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" — that we see any old-school rappers taking their place alongside the giants of rock and roll. DMC, one-third of Run-DMC, told MTV News you won't see him at any induction dinners until the hall recognizes early hip-hop. "You have a whole period of rap and a whole history before us that's definitely gotta be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before I get there.

"Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel?" he continued. "No, I'm not coming to the ceremony until you put Melle Mel in there, 'cause he did 'The Message' and he did 'Super Rappin'.' They gotta put them in before us and Public Enemy, and everybody's gotta get their props."

• Aerosmith
• Queen
• Paul Simon
• Michael Jackson
• Steely Dan