YEAR
1991
INDUCTED BY
Bobby Brown
CATEGORY
Performers
The Wicked Pickett’s signature scream established him as a soul icon.
Wilson Pickett had swagger. He was soulful and seductive, but Pickett was most famous for his scream, a powerful belt that he inexplicably kept dead on pitch.
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Leo Sacks
Showering his volcano of a voice over a stripped-down backbeat, Wilson Pickett was the original Midnight Mover, a man-and-a-half to a legion of female admirers, a modern-day Stagger Lee who fought with the Devil and came out on top.
Rough-hewn, sex-driven, he brought passion and pain to every throaty scream. Because there was no in-between for Wilson Pickett, the “Wicked” Pickett, the blood and guts of Southern soul.
More from the class of 1991