In the city without clocks, it is 2:15 a.m. -- showtime at, among other places, the Casino Lounge at the Las Vegas Hilton. For Liberace in the main showroom, you have to stand in line and pay $15 (plus tax) a head to get a good chance of being squeezed tighter than the headliner's teeth.

At the Casino Lounge, there's no cover, no minimum (drinks are $2.50); you can stagger in without a reservation and, depending on your timing, see any of three rotating shows: Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, the Kim Brothers or -- of all the names to pop up in Vegas -- Wilson Pickett.

We time ourselves to see the wicked one.

He is introduced by one of his nine Midnight Movers as "The Dynamic . . . Soulful . . . Legend in His Own Time," and he comes bouncing out, glowing like a bruised but unbowed champ in a simple black tux, a long white scarf tied around the neck.

He is facing a third of a house -- maybe thirty-six occupied tables -- but he performs main showrooms all the way. He joins his hornmen in a few easy shuffle steps, lets out his pantented, leathery scream and rolls into and through "Funky Broadway," "Get Me Back on Time," "Engine Number Nine" and "I'm in Love." It's hits all the way. With "Mustang Sally," he moves into the crowd. One woman jumps up to bump with him; another offers a taste of wine. Wilson turns his attention back to the stage for a lengthy workout on "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You." Pickett the producer/songwriter picks the song apart, scats a bass line, makes childlike percussive sounds at the drummer. His back is to the audience -- he seems oblivious -- and as the congas rev up, a party of four ups and leaves.

In Ghana, West Africa, for the Soul to Soul show in 1971, part of the Independence Day crowd of 100,000 charged the stage and had Pickett dancing all the way to his dressing room. Here, the applause from thirty-five tables died down long before the music. The soul was all onstage.

Pickett didn't care. The thirty-four-year-old native of Prattville, Alabama, has been working Vegas (sixteen weeks a year, four weeks at a time) for four years -- or since Ghana. By 1971, his greatest hits were mostly behind him, and in early 1973 he left Atlantic Records, his label for eight years, to sign with RCA. At RCA, he got the financial guarantees he said he couldn't get from Atlantic, but he made no hit records. Atlantic's Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd were music men behind Wilson in the early days. Of RCA, Pickett himself said, "They were just too busy. I've always felt that their biggest clientele was in electronics anyway."

He found Vegas an easy way to cushion his already cushy income. ("He's one of the highest-paid performers in certain areas -- like Vegas and Japan," said an RCA publicist. "I hear he was making $17,000 a week in Vegas. And RCA paid him a lot of money, too." Pickett himself agreed that he had a "great guarantee" at RCA, and laughed. "I mean, I didn't have to do any more work!") Excepting a tour through Japan last spring, he gave up concerts and roadwork.

But Pickett is tiring of Vegas now. "It's the type of gig that you can neglect the rest of the music world," he said. "I don't think it's a place an artist of my caliber should just stay. I had a four-year contract here, I honored my contract and I'm finished. You see, I got to go back out there now."

Wilson had shaken us out of a five-hour sleep with his return call. At ten in the morning, he sounded anxious to talk. In his large but simply appointed "San Franciscan" suite, he greeted us in a blue robe, took a corner sofa and got to the point: "See, I've just been given my own record company, and I've left RCA. T.K. Productions -- Henry Stone -- has given me my own label, and I have a single coming out next week called "The Best Part of a Man," and then I have an album out in January called Chocolate Mountain. So things are beginning to change for me. I was kind of missing for a little while there."

At RCA, he did four albums, undistinguished except for an attempt, early on, to slow down, even adding strings. The RCA man remembered Pickett saying that "he was tired of yelling like a gorilla; he wanted to soften his style." Pickett was also writing more personal songs, about domestic and political difficulties. ("Two Woman and a Wife," "Take the Pollution Out of Your Throat").

"Maybe I can put the blame on myself," said Pickett. "I probably just neglected the fact that I'm supposed to cut this kind of record. I went into material that was so personal to me, and I had forgotten about the outside world that really wasn't that deep into this kind of thing, that seriousness. They want to hear a fuckin' beat, man, 'sock it to me' with the Soul Train."

Other artists, we ventured, had succeeded with "statement" albums, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder among them. And sometimes, we added, the best material is the most personal. Pickett was quick with his answer:

"They ain't gonna buy it. Matter of fact, they never gonna buy it anymore by me 'cause I'm not gonna make any more." A hmmph of a pause. "So they can forget about that!"

Chocolate Mountain, he said, "is right back into Wilson Pickett." The album, cut in Nashville, reunites him with producer Brad Shapiro ("Don't Knock My Love"). "We went back and got our old musicians from Muscle Shoals and Memphis. And the material is all new. Some great writers on there, guys that have had Number One songs and shit."

Pickett has his own label -- fittingly called Wicked Records -- because "I wouldn't sign ever in my life again my name to any contract for any record company as an artist," -- but has no immediate plans to build its roster. "First of all," he said, "I want to get me going."

After Vegas, Pickett was planning to hit the road, first to Zambia, Africa, then that other exotic town, Denver.

The stage show, he promised, would be more than greatest hits. In Vegas, he had been working around the corner from the Thunderbird, where "Dick Clark's Good Ol' Rock n' Roll" revue was packin' them in. Most people, we told Pickett, were not ready to see him on that road. The president of Wicked Records straightened up on the sofa: "I ain't goin' with no fucking Dick Clark," he said, a snort on his face. "I ain't no oldie but goodie -- nowhere near me, man. Don't retire me now!"

[From Issue 201 — December 4, 1975]