![]() ![]() as the band toured relentlessly, playing 246 shows in 16 countries just by the end of 2016. In the wake of “S.O.B.,” Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats went gold in the U.S. It may be the most improbable breakout of this viral-pop-star decade: a white classic-soul band led by a burly middle-aged singer. The next day, Fallon got a phone call from Paul McCartney, who saw the broadcast and wanted to know, “Who was that guy? That was fantastic.”Ī month later, Rateliff was in a meeting at his record label when, he says, “one guy who does statistics said, ‘You really fucked my job. Let’s tear it up.’ I remember seeing Jimmy over there, freaking out.” The studio audience responded with a standing ovation. “But by the time we got onstage, I wasn’t thinking about playing to millions of people,” Rateliff says. During the taping, the host “kept putting the record on his desk,” the singer recalls, “cutting off his guests: ‘You gotta check this out.'” Backstage, getting his makeup, Rateliff worried about living up to Fallon’s enthusiasm. On August 5th, 2015, Rateliff and the Night Sweats played “S.O.B.” on The Tonight Show – two weeks before their debut album, including that song, was released. “That was,” Fallon says, “the last thing that sold me: ‘This has to be on television.'” At one point, the singer, a barrel-chested man with a thick brown beard, does a nimble James Brown-like swivel on the tips of his shoes. He belts the chorus – “Son of a bitch, gimme a drink!” – like an enraged Van Morrison armed with a wall of horns, atop a Ray Charles-style charge. That clip, still on YouTube, was shot on an iPhone from the side of the stage in November 2013 at one of Rateliff’s early gigs with the Night Sweats. Nevertheless, he watched the video: a live performance of an explosive R&B song called “S.O.B.,” short for “Son of a Bitch.” Fallon’s immediate reaction: “This dude is insane. “Everybody has an idea of how to make the show better, who I should have on,” Fallon says, laughing. “He should be on the show.” There was a link to a YouTube clip by Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, an eight-piece band unknown outside Denver. One day in the summer of 2015, Jimmy Fallon, the host of The Tonight Show, received an e-mail from a close friend, Corbin Day. ![]()
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