Solomon Burke’s big success.

When asked to pick a favorite song on his remarkable 2002 comeback release, Don’t Give Up On Me, the legendary soul singer Solomon Burke takes the diplomatic route. “There is no way to pick a song on this album and say this is my favorite,” he says in a phone interview from his home in the hills of Los Angeles. “These songs are songs that I enjoy from the bottom of my heart, and each one of these songs has a memory and a meaning and a soul of its own.”

It is a wise answer to a tough question, considering the fact that the songs were contributed by some of popular music’s greatest songwriters, including Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and Nick Lowe.

When Burke first heard about the list of contributors that producer (and alt-county hero) Joe Henry had assembled for Don’t Give Up On Me, the soul singer says his breath was taken away. “All of these guys are superstars; and me, I’m just still trying to get up there in the sky,” he says. “You know, I’m just trying to make it.”

All the contributions are “commercially unreleased original compositions, either specifically custom tailored to, or innately suited for the interpretive genius of this unrivaled singer,” according to the album’s liner notes. Bob Dylan’s “Stepchild,” is a song that has only been performed by its writer once at a 1978 concert. The Elvis Costello and Cait O’Riordan number, “The Judgment,” was written specifically for Burke.

Despite the impressive list of contributors, Don’t Give Up On Me is primarily a platform for Burke to display his extraordinary voice. With low-key instrumentation, including organ and acoustic guitar, Burke moves from smoldering crooning to passionate pleading throughout the title track, written by Dan Penn. In the song, over washes of organ, Burke is a desperate man pulling out all the stops to persuade his woman not to leave his side. “I know it’s late in the game,” sings the 64 year-old singer—maybe a message to his fans that the best is yet to come.

On the Van Morrison composition “Fast Train,” Burke’s delivery builds in intensity until the end of the tune, where he sounds like a preacher in the throes of religious fervor; on Waits’ “Diamond In Your Mind,” he straightforwardly delivers the songwriter’s oddball lyrics about a woman who lost her arm in a Pinkerton raid.

And the stars come through for the soul legend. The Blind Boys of Alabama sing background vocals on the human rights anthem “None of Us Are Free.” Daniel Lanois (the New Orleans-based genius producer of albums by U2 and Dylan) plays guitar on Dylan’s bluesy “Stepchild.” Elvis Costello stopped by the studio to sing his contribution, “The Judgment.”

“He sang it to me, and I sang it back to him,” Burke says. “It was just wonderful.”

So why did so many topnotch songwriters come together to assist this singer, who is not a household name like Al Green or Aretha Franklin? It’s because, even though Burke’s songs are not in heavy rotation on “old school” radio stations, some people believe that there is no better soul singer alive.

Jerry Wexler, the famed music producer who worked with Ray Charles and Otis Redding, says “Burke is the greatest soul singer of them all,” while music writer and historian Peter Guralnick dedicated his book, Sweet Soul Music, to Burke for his important contributions to the genre.

Burke, who is as affable as can be during our phone interview, says he started singing as a child, while “trying to hit a few notes and do whatever everyone else was doing” at church. By the time he was seven years old, Burke was co-hosting a weekly gospel program on Radio WDAS, and by 12 years of age, the precocious child was delivering sermons at the House of God for All People in Philadelphia, a church founded by his grandmother.

Burke says his grandmother had big plans for him.

“I became a bishop automatically,” he says. “My grandmother placed me in that position before I was born—12 years before I was born. So I guess I could be considered one of the youngest bishops of all time.”

At 14, Burke recorded his first single, “Christmas Presents From Heaven.”

“It’s way back before you were a twinkle in the sprinkle of the eye,” he says of the 78-rpm record. “It was a Christmas song and the other single was ‘I’m All Alone.’ It was dedicated to the memory of my grandmother.”

By the late ‘50s, Burke was fed up with the music industry, he says, because he did not receive his fair share of royalties. So he stopped recording and performing. Luckily for soul music lovers, Burke gave the recording industry a second chance in 1960. Due in part to the urging of his new manager, Babe Shivian, Burke signed to Atlantic Records and started to record hit soul singles like “Just Out of Reach,” “Cry to Me,” and “Everybody Needs Someone to Love.” (The latter two were covered by a young blues-rock band called the Rolling Stones.)

While Burke was cementing his reputation as one of soul music’s finest singers with a string of hits for Atlantic Records, the musician’s legend grew with tales of his shameless entrepreneurial spirit. One time, it is said that Burke almost cancelled a show at Harlem’s Apollo Theater because the producers weren’t going to let him sell his concession-stand popcorn, which he branded Soul Corn.

In addition to his singing career, concession stand popcorn business and position as a bishop in the House of God for All People, Burke is also a mortician who owns his own mortuary business. Burke says that he became a mortician when he left the record business in the late ’50s and worked at his uncle’s mortuary in Philadelphia.

“Well, I think it was a very important step in my life,” he says. “That moment of transition between show business and no business.”

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Burke put his music career on the backburner to focus on his church and his families (he has had three wives, and has a massive clan of 21 children and 63 grandchildren).

Now, Burke says, he is just excited that so many great artists came together to help him reignite his career with Don’t Give Up On Me: “Come on, when you start thinking of these great people, from Bob Dylan on down, saying ‘Solomon Burke: sing these songs.’ You say, ‘wow.’ Thank God for the blessing.”

With a new album on the way, produced by Don Was (featuring possible contributions by Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones) slated for release early next year, Burke is hoping to retain the audience he captured with his last album.

“I think it will be a feel of true soul and true meanings,” he says of the new yet-untitled release. “And trying to keep the feeling and momentum that we already built with Don’t Give Up On Me.”

Solomon Burke performs in the Monterey Bay Blues Festival’s Main Arena Friday at 8:20pm.