Wilson Pickett, who died yesterday at 64, was the hard-driving soul singer responsible for such hits as “Mustang Sally” and “In the Midnight Hour.”

The son of Alabama sharecroppers, Pickett came of age at a time of great musical invention in Detroit, where gospel was fusing with blues to produce soul and the Motown sound.Among the most successful musicians of the late 1960s, Pickett charted 16 top-40 hits, including “Land of 1,000 Dances,” “634-5789,” and covers of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar.”

Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler dubbed him “Wicked Pickett,” and he did his best to live up the name, especially in the 1990s when, having dropped out the music business, he was arrested for hitting a pedestrian while driving drunk, drug charges, and assault. In 1991, Pickett drove across the lawn of his neighbor, the mayor of Englewood, N.J., shouting death threats and obscenities.

But he entered rehab, and in the late 1990s began recording again, including the notably salacious album “It’s Harder Now” (2000), which was nominated for a Grammy and won the 2000 W.C. Handy Award for best soul/blues album. Critics said he hadn’t lost a lick.

Pickett, the youngest of 11 children, was subjected to a poor and violent upbringing in rural Prattville, Alabama, and frequently ran away to avoid his mother’s beatings. While still a teenager, he moved to Detroit to live with his father. “Me and a million other dudes said ‘Later’ to pickin’ cotton and that s-,” Pickett told Gerri Hirshey, author of “Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music.”

He got involved in the lively Detroit music scene, singing at first with a gospel group called the Violinaires. He later was lead singer with a secular music band that had some success, the Falcons, including the hit “I Found a Love.” He was signed to Atlantic Records in 1964, mainly on the strength of his songwriting. In 1965, he recorded at the Memphis studios of Stax Records, where the house band was Booker T. and the MG’s. The session produced a no. 6 hit, “In the Midnight Hour,” which Pickett wrote with the guitarist Steve Cropper, as a song for a new dance craze, the “Jerk.”

The next year he recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals,Alabama.At first, he was dubious about returning to the Deep South. “I looked down out the plane window, and I see black folks pickin’ cotton, and I say, ‘S-, turn this f-‘ plane around, ain’t no way I’m goin’ back there.'” But instead he led masterful sessions that produced “Land of 1,000 Dances,” “Mustang Sally,” and “Funky Broadway.” Between 1966 and 1972, when he charted his last top-40 hit with “Fire and Water,” Pickett was among the top soul musicians, rivaling Otis Redding and James Brown. Like those artists, his career took a dive with the rise of disco, although he continued to tour for years.

In the early 1990s, Pickett’s career seemed poised for a rebound. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the film “The Commitments” brought his music to a new generation of fans. But a short prison stay prevented him from attending his Hall of Fame induction, and drug and legal problems put the kibosh touring until later in the decade. After going through a couple of rounds of rehab, he moved to Virginia, in 1998.

With the release of “It’s Harder Now,” Pickett staged a revival. The album featured songs by soul legends Dan Penn (who wrote “Do Right Woman” and “Dark End of the Street”) and Don Covay (“Chain of Fools,” “Mercy Mercy”). It was strictly old school, as he told the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., “No samples, loops, or digital instruments.” But Pickett did update the raunch factor, with song titles like “Taxi Love” and “All About Sex.”

“I think if you don’t write lyrics about sex, your record ain’t gonna sell,” Pickett said. “Years ago I would never do a song called ‘What’s Under Your Dress?'”

He continued to tour playing a mix of old and new material with undiminished enthusiasm, until illness stopped him last year,.

“I used to always have a pretty high, little clear voice, but as I got older, I got a little cornbread in it,” he told the Detroit News in 2004.

Wilson Pickett
Born March 18, 1941, in Prattsville, Ala.; died January 19 in Reston, Va., of a heart attack; he is survived by four children.