Okay…I got a quick schooling on the legendary soul singer, The Mighty Hannibal last night at Magnetic Field, where we went to see a new throwback 4-girl singing group called the Sweet Divines. What’s cool is that in the super-packed house, I got to stand next to the blind soul legend right there at the bar in front of the stage, where I helped him whenever he needed the bartender to pour him another Jack on the rocks. He also shared with me the moments when he thought the girls (and amazing backing band) were totally on point…and there were a lot of those times.
As soon as the girls hit the stage, they went into Hannibal’s biggest hit, ‘Somebody in the World For You‘ (which you can listen to right here). Hannibal seemed to love it! It was nice to see him so excited to hear these young white cats completely nailing his material…because it would be pretty sad if they sucked. They played for a good hour, the rest of the songs originals, and sounded fantastic. I should’ve seen it coming, but when encore time came, the band said they were out of songs. But they could play an old soul song but it requires a male vocal. Up jumped Hannibal, as a couple helping hands reached out to guide his way to the stage, and they launched into another Mighty hit, ‘Get in the Groove’. It was tons of fun.
So only having heard of Hannibal only here and there, on What It Is R&B and Soul compilation, and remembering hearing about him singing withe the Dansettes at McCarren Pool last summer, I just did some searching and re-listening and found some cool stuff. And I will share three things with you now:
1) The song above…”Somebody in the World For You” by the Mighty Hannibal
2) This picture, so that you can see that he used to wear a turban…
3) This killer series of YouTubes that I found from last January when Hannibal performed with one of my favorite newer bands, The Black Lips…
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