Percy Sledge, Smooth Wailer in 'When a Man Loves a Woman,' Is Dead at 74

Percy Sledge, the R&B vocalist whose profound melody of everlasting adoration and dismissal, "When a Man Loves a Woman," bested the outlines in 1966, kicked the bucket on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, La. He was 74.

His demise was affirmed by Artists International Management, which spoke to him. Mr. Sledge had liver tumor, for which he experienced surgery in 2014, Mark Lyman, his operators and supervisor, said.

Mr. Sledge, in some cases called the King of Slow Soul, was a wistful crooner and one of the South's first soul stars, having ascended to popularity from employments picking cotton and filling in as a healing center deliberate while performing at clubs and schools on the weekends."I was singing each style of music: the Beatles, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Motown, Sam Cooke, the Platters," he once said.

"At the point when a Man Loves a Woman" was his first recording for Atlantic Records, after a patient at the doctor's facility acquainted him with the record maker Quin Ivy. It came to No. 1 on the pop outlines in 1966 and sold more than a million duplicates, turning into the name's first gold record. (The Recording Industry Association of America started guaranteeing records as gold in 1958.) Raw and lovelorn, the tune was a reaction to a lady who had abandoned him for another man, Mr. Sledge said. He called its arrangement a "wonder."