Solomon Burke had gone several decades without a hit to speak of when soon after his induction to the Hall of Fame, the legendary soul man had a conversation that would change his life.

	Solomon Burke Click photo for larger image. Solomon Burke Where: Hartwood Acres, Hampton. When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Admission: Free.

B urke laughs as he recalls the proposition that led to the '60s soul veteran's first Grammy Award for "Don't Give up on Me," a Fat Possum Records debut that found a number of the greatest writers in the history of rock 'n' roll, from Bob Dylan to Elvis Costello, lining up to give him songs, resulting in a new soul classic Mojo magazine declared the best release of 2002.

But then, he tends to punctuate most things he says with laughter.

When Epitaph president Andy Kaulkin first approached him about putting out a record on Fat Possum, Burke recalls, "At first, I thought it was a football team, the Fat Possums."

But he listened anyway.

As Burke recalls, "He told me, 'I've got an idea. I don't know if it'll work, but if you're willing to sit down and talk to me about it, I'm willing to talk about it.' And I said, 'Sure.' So we had lunch, and the next thing you know he said, 'What would it take for you to do an album?' And I told him. He said, 'OK, I've got a check in my pocket. I'm gonna write it.' And I says, 'Yeah? OK. Sounds good. This lunch is getting better all the time here.' "

Burke erupts in laughter at the memory, or his telling of the memory, then continues.

"He said, 'My idea is to get all these great people to write these songs for you and we'll do this great album.' And I said, 'That sounds wonderful.' I'm lookin' at the check and I'm foldin' the check up, you know, puttin' it in my pocket, goin' 'This sounds really wonderful.' I said, 'I'll tell you what. Why don't you do that. Put that all together and call me back in about three days' -- you know, time for me to cash the check. He says, 'I'll contact all these people.' And on my way out the door, I said, 'Let me ask you a question. All these big stars you're gonna get to write me songs, do you know them?' He said, 'Oh, no, I don't know them.' I said, 'You don't mind if I have to call from the bank tomorrow, do you?' "

Three weeks later, Kaulkin called him in to sift through a big stack of mail.

"I went in and looked and the first envelope I picked up was Bob Dylan," Burke says, with a laugh. "I freaked out. Elvis Costello? C'mon! Van Morrison? It just went on and on. I said, 'As fast as you can get the studio, I'm ready to record.' And that's what we did, an incredible four days of magic."

At one point, Costello turned up at the studio to hear Burke sing "The Judgement," a breathtaking highlight of those sessions that Burke says he'd like to perform as a mini-opera with the Italian Symphony Orchestra.

But at the time, he hadn't heard it yet.

As Burke recalls, he was cutting some tracks with producer Joe Henry when Costello strolled in unannounced.

"I had already given the order that there can be no smoking, no drinking, no pot, none of this in the studio while I'm recording," Burke says. "So I'm all isolated in the recording booth area, spiritually trying to do these songs and somebody runs through and says, 'Elvis is here! Elvis is here!' And I said 'Oh, my God, somebody got loose with some kind of crack or pot in this place.' "

Burke laughs, then continues his story.

"So Elvis walks in and introduces himself like the pizza delivery man, says, 'My name is Elvis Costello and I heard you're recording my song and I wanted to know if I could hear it.' And just then, Andy runs into the studio and he hands me this sheet of music and says 'Uh, Joe, we're getting ready to do the Elvis Costello song now. Solomon doesn't know it yet.' So this guy sits down in the booth and sings the song to me. And I'm sittin' there saying, 'This is not real. This is not ... Has anybody got a camera? Is anybody filming this? This man is singing this song to me.' So he would sing the song and I would sing it right after him in the booth because I just wanted to capture every moment that he was giving me."

To understand what put Costello in the isolation booth that day, you'd have to be familiar with the string of classic singles Burke recorded for Atlantic in the early '60s, from the soulful ache of "Cry to Me," a single Otis Redding clearly studied, to the hit whose testifying climax found him drawing on his roots as Philadelphia's Wonder Boy Preacher, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love," which, much like "Cry to Me," would soon be covered by the Rolling Stones. Those are the records that led to people dubbing Burke the King of Rock 'n' Soul and the Bishop of Soul in the '60s, the records that led no lesser an authority on soul than producer Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records to proclaim, "The best soul singer of all time is Solomon Burke."

Like many of the best soul singers of all time, he learned to sing that way in church. For Burke, it was his parents' church, the House of God for All People, in Philadelphia, where he became a preacher at the tender age of 7, hosting a radio program called "Solomon's Temple" as a preteen.

"You know, you just wanted to stand and do something with high praise," he says. "And singing and preaching to me was high praise in the church, and I wanted to do that. And the Lord just blessed me and I'm still working on the blessing."

This was in the 1940s, at a time a person might be tempted to refer to as the pre-soul era. But as Burke is quick to point out, "Soul existed 500 years ago. People have just put a label on it. But music has been soulful since the beginning of time. The Indian dances were soulful. If you listen to some of the rap songs, it's the same rhythm today. It's the same marching band sound you heard in high school and college. This is how the soul of the music has just incorporated itself into all different phases of music. Country, gospel, jazz, blues, pop, rap, rock, and it just keeps moving because all we're doing is expressing the deeper feelings inside ourselves, which creates the word soulful."

It was also at his parents' church that Burke first adopted the regal image of King Solomon.

"I started with the cape at 7," he says. "My grandmother made me this cape because I used to hold onto my blankie. I had this blanket I used to drag around all the time, and she made me that cape to let me get rid of the blanket. So my first cape was my blanket, and from there it became my little preaching cape that I could only wear on Sundays when I went to church so I respected that I had to fold it up and put it up, because that was my little preaching cape I used. And then later on in the years, in the late '50s, came Rockin' Robin, who was a disc jockey out of Baltimore who decided that we were gonna do something different for the show so we decided that he was gonna crown me the King of Rock 'n' Soul. And, boy, oh boy, if he had known what he was gonna do."

His first recording hit the streets in 1955. Five years later, he signed to Atlantic, a union that produced such early soul classics as "Just out of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms)," "Cry to Me," "Down in the Valley," "I'm Hanging up My Heart for You," "If You Need Me," "You're Good for Me," "Tonight's the Night," "Take Me (Just As I Am)" and a heartfelt tribute to his friend Sam Cooke, the R&B chart-topper "Got to Get You off My Mind."

His last Atlantic hit was 1968's "Soul Meeting," a group effort by the Soul Clan (which also featured Arthur Conley, Don Covay, Ben E. King and Joe Tex). But Burke kept recording and scored the occasional hit into the '70s, hitting the R&B Top 20 with a cover of "Proud Mary" (1969), "Midnight and You" (1974) and "You and Your Baby Blues" (1975).

By 2001, the year of Burke's induction to the Hall of Fame, it's hard to picture anyone imagining the kind of comeback he has enjoyed these past few years. But there he was, winning a Grammy in 2003 for best contemporary blues recording.

"My first Grammy," Burke says, clearly still amazed. "C'mon man, 50 years, first Grammy! Sometimes you say to yourself, 'Is all this really happening or is something else happening that I'm not aware of?' And you just look around and something says, 'Go with the flow. Hang in there. And let God do it for you because you know what? You can't do it all by yourself. Nobody can do it all. But there is someone who can do the impossible.' When they called my name and said, 'Solomon Burke, come up and get your Grammy,' I was like, 'Man!' I almost fell. I said 'I been waitin' 40 years to come up these steps.' "

And then, of course, he laughs.

The story could have had a happy ending then and there, but Burke returned this year with the Don Was-produced "Make Do With What You Got," an even more impressive record than the one that spawned the comeback. And this one has horns.

"I wanted to completely try," he says, "and this is hard for me, to put myself into the hands of the producer and say, 'OK, Don, where do you want me to go? And what happened is, Don says, 'OK, now that we've got all the tunes picked, now that we've got you in the studio, go where you want to go.' And that's what happened. But I hope and pray that this record will not be a record that competes with 'Don't Give Up on Me,' but in everyone's life there's a right and a left, and I think this record becomes the matching end to the other record because it's different, it has a different feeling, it has a different story, and yet it has the same direct spiritual soul or connection that says this is coming from within."

Highlights range from his soulful renditions of Hank Williams' "Wealth Won't Save Your Soul" and Robbie Robertson's "It Makes No Difference" to latter-day Dylan ("What Good Am I?") and the Stones' "I Got the Blues."

This marks the first time he's covered the Stones, whose latest live album finds the band once again tearing it up on "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" -- this time with Burke on vocals.

Asked if he'd covered the Stones before, Burke laughs.

"Are you kidding?!" he asks. "I've been praying for them to keep covering me."

Even back in the '60s, he says, he loved that the Stones were recording his music.

"I was very, very honored," he says, "because I was able to see my music taken to another level and places I thought I would never get a chance to go or be. Great festivals, millions of people listening to your song, singing your song and then 'The Blues Brothers' came along and put it in a movie. Look back on the Rolling Stones. They recorded it over 14 times. How blessed can you be as an artist at 65 years old, 50 years in this business, to have the Rolling Stones keep releasing your song? C'mon. Are you kidding? I was happy. I keep sending them more songs. They won't keep listening."

He speaks highly of all the artists whose songs he's recorded on these past two albums, from Costello to Van Morrison ("That's writing, man") to Dylan, whose music he first covered in the '60s.

"I love Bob Dylan," Burke enthuses. " 'I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more.' I met him once and was so fascinated by his character and his message of peace, and his message of bringing people together spiritually through song on a nonsectarian basis. You had to come into the message to find out where it was going. And he was just so timely. You listen to his messages in his songs, they're all saying, 'We can do this thing. Hang in there.' "

It's the kind of message Burke himself was hoping to convey with those uplifting album titles. Don't give up on me. Make do with what you got.

"We're living in a time of so much greed, when there's so many people in need," he says, falling back on a lifetime of preaching experience. "We're living in a time of leadership in America where the greed is just overwhelming. How much oil do we need? How much dope do we need to bring into America? I thought we were getting rid of that. I thought we were fighting the War on Drugs. Then the War on Terrorism took over. I thought we were fighting the War on Hunger and Homelessness and the Lack of Education. Those things have been lost. I thought we were talking about senior citizens and different things that we could do to make this great country of ours even greater than what it is. And somehow we got lost along the way with a war. And $30 billion later, we have people in Africa starving. We have people in America hungry. We have people in America homeless. We have children in America with no shoes on their feet, with no place to sleep. What are we talking about? What are we doing? If we can get this message through in a song, with the magic of music that says to my young friends who are so fantastically blessed with the new wealth, the prosperity, that says wealth won't save your soul, make do with what you got, smell the roses, taste the coffee. Tea still works. You don't need drugs. Take a cup of tea and see. And try to realize that what we have, we can make it better."

That's the key for Burke. Even after the Grammy, the Hall of Fame induction, the isolation-booth visit from Elvis Costello, that's how he continues to approach each day.

"I'm working very hard," he says, "and very diligently to improve my act, to improve my show each day, to reach a perfection. And I know that if you keep trying, things will get better and that new things come your way if you believe and receive and accept them. Sometimes we have to do things that we've never done before to make the miracle happen. I'm a positive believer in positivity. There's no other way. Negativity doesn't work. Because it's already negative."

He laughs, then asks, "Why even deal with that? Why don't you work on doing it?"