Charles Bradley, the journeyman soul singer whose beleaguered rasp and passionate live performances turned him from an itinerant worker and small-time James Brown impersonator into a late-in-life headliner, died on Saturday in Brooklyn. He was 68.

The cause was liver cancer, said Shazila Mohammed, a publicist for the singer.

Mr. Bradley had stomach cancer diagnosed in the fall of 2016. He underwent treatment and returned to touring this year, but canceled his remaining live shows earlier this month and announced that the cancer had spread to his liver. “I love all of you out there that made my dreams come true,” Mr. Bradley said at the time.

Known as the Screaming Eagle of Soul for his serrated cries of pain and longing, Mr. Bradley released his first album, “No Time for Dreaming,” in 2011 at the age of 62. The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica wrote that the LP “wants to be part of no movement, heralds no shift in the sonic landscape; it just wants to be. It has the feeling of childbirth, messy and noisy and urgent.”