The Dark End of the Street - Percy Sledge

The Dark End of the Street


If Dave brought us two (very different) versions of the same street story, then I would like to present a third telling in this little romantic Rashomon: Percy Sledge's "The Dark End of the Street."

Bill Withers has just stomped by with Percy's girl. Percy has tried to give Withers the stare down, but he doesn't have it in him. Percy's a lover, not a fighter. Look at that man over there. A man with curls like that isn't worried about posturing because while you're flexing down at the corner bar, tapping your feet to Arthur Conley, he's busy whispering sweet nothings in your girl's ear. This is a man who has only ever curled his fist around a microphone.

But Withers' return look, a dead-eyed look of unnamable recriminations, stops Percy cold in the street. He watches Withers walk away with his girl, listening to him ask her pointed questions. Who is he to her!? Only her truest love! Then, the strings begin to tighten around the girl in question and Withers' massive arm pulls her closer. That tambourine sounds ominously like a fist being punched into the palm of his hand. Someone's seeing the business end of that fist tonight, dadgumit.

Percy's paralyzed. He feels his heart breaking as their history together on this very street comes back in the wavy notes of a guitar. Here, on this street, at the dark end down there, he used to meet her. They didn't belong there, but then again they didn't belong anywhere. Now here come the waves of guilt. Percy might be a ladies man, but he's right with Jesus. Everything he has done in the name of love is framed as erotic iniquity. His paranoia threatens to get the best of this lover man: Withers knows, his wife knows, everyone down at Muscle Shoals First Baptist Church knows. And they're going to find Percy and his girl. And it's going to end. With some of the unbrassiest horn backing in all of soul, Percy almost loses it.

But a voice rises up from the graveyard organ haunting Percy's song. A voice so sonorous and pure that it can only be the lonely call of his girl. She's still in if he is! He won't give up. He won't be a martyr for love. Percy ain't going to let Bill 'The Cuckold' Withers stand in his way. This man has a plan. Should this happen again, she is to be cool. She is to be much cooler than she was today ("Clearing your throat? Are you kidding me!?"). Just walk on by. Don't give anything away. Don't cry because we'll meet later. We'll work on your excuse. We'll meet down at the dark end of the street, and then we've got the world open before us.