Go Ahead, Call It a Comeback
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But as difficult and disappointing as his performing years were, there was worse in store for him. In 1976 his 13-year-old daughter died in a fire; grief led him to divorce his wife of two decades in 1981. He began using cocaine, and by 1985 drugs had taken over his life. He lost his job. “I was depleting everything I had, my savings, my retirement plan,” he says. “It got worse and worse, and it took me down so low until I became homeless.” He spent most of the next ten years across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey, hustling to support his crack habit. Then in 1994, he says, he heard a voice from God. Tate, whose father had been a Baptist preacher, turned to religion and eventually started a church in New Jersey, ministering to drug addicts, the homeless, and the mentally ill.
Later that year Tate gave triumphant performances in New York and New Orleans and began recording with Ragovoy in Atlanta. This month the Private Music label released Rediscovered, his first new album since 1972. In an industry where overuse has made the word comeback nearly meaningless, the singer’s return is nothing less than inspirational. While the material and production on the new album leave it well short of the records Tate made in the 60s, his voice–a creamy, gospel-rooted cry crowned with an otherworldly falsetto–is undiminished in its power, range, and expressiveness.
Sound Investment
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Koshtra Tolle.
