The Soul Clan

The Soul Clan
Origin	New York, New York
Genres	Soul, rhythm and blues
Years active	1966-1969; 1981
Labels	Atlantic Records
Past members	Solomon Burke (deceased) Arthur Conley (deceased) Don Covay (deceased) Ben E. King (deceased) Otis Redding (deceased) Wilson Pickett (deceased) Joe Tex (deceased)

The Soul Clan was a collective of American soul musicians led by Solomon Burke, which started in 1966 as started by Burke, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Don Covay and Joe Tex. Later, both Pickett and Redding left the collective and were replaced by fellow Atlantic artists such as Arthur Conley (a protege of Redding's) and Ben E. King. After the release of the minor successful R&B song, "Soul Meeting", the collective broke up in 1969. The collective, which included Pickett stepping in for Conley, who had by then settled in Europe, briefly reunited in 1981 for a brief performance before splintering for good.

In 1966 Burke teamed with fellow Atlantic artists Wilson Pickett, Don Covay, Otis Redding, and Joe Tex to form a coalition called The Soul Clan. In a 1992 interview Burke indicated that The Soul Clan asked Atlantic to advance $1 million to them. "I remember one time we walked in and asked for a million dollars. It was Otis Redding, Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett, Don Covay, Ben E. King and myself. We all went in together. We were all on the charts. We all asked for a million dollars for a real estate project, as an organization, as a soul clan. We intended to buy up a lot of property in the South, in the ghetto areas and re-modeled them and built homes. And, we needed a million dollars to put this project together. We walked into Atlantic asking for that and wound up being put on the back shelf. ... All of us together were asking for a million. You and I know of course that all of us together at that time made millions and millions for Atlantic. Their idea was "to pool their talents and resources, and become a positive force within the black community. They envisioned things like buying ghetto real estate and refurbishing it, providing jobs, building schools, and creating black-owned restaurant franchises that would knock the McDonald's and KFCs out of the box... the possibilities were endless." Burke explained the purpose of this alliance: "We wanted to interlock ourselves as a group, to express to the younger people how strong we should be and to help one another, work with one another and support one another." While "Burke saw the collaboration as a stepping stone toward building an autonomous African-American business empire, ... Covay, more successful as a songwriter than a performer, hoped to promote his own career alongside those of his friends." About this time Burke, Redding and James Brown had discussed forming an organization to provide health care benefits and pensions for older black musicians.

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