“I Found a Love” (1962) – The Falcons * Written by Wilson Pickett, Willie Schofield, and Robert West * 45: “Swim” / “Lu Pine” * Label: Lu Pine
Guitarist Steve Cropper has been quoted as having taken inspiration for “In the Midnight Hour” from one of Pickett’s gospel tracks, in which he sings, near the end, “I want to see Jesus in the midnight hour!” It’s almost certain he was thinking of this track, though, which sounds gospel and features Pickett saying at 2:25, “and sometimes I call in the midnight hour!” The only record Pickett had appeared on before the Falcons (who also included Eddie Floyd and Mack Rice) was called “Sign of the Judgement” (1957), in which he sang second lead with the Violinaires in Detroit, featuring nothing Cropper could have even misheard that way. (Tony Fletcher, in his In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett, dispels other rumors that Pickett had recorded with a group called The Spiritual Five.)