ALLEN KLEIN, MEANWHILE, had flown to England on March 16 as an emissary for RCA. Joe D’Imperio empowered him to offer $1 million plus a 10 percent royalty to the Beatles, but when he met with their manager, Brian Epstein, in his suite at the Dorchester, on his own initiative he doubled the cash offer. Epstein, according to Allen, turned down the RCA bid out of hand, citing loyalty to EMI, their British label, but he did express interest in Sam opening for the group on their next American tour. This, Allen said, he would have to take under advisement—there were too many things up in the air right now. One of which was his own unanticipated signing of the Dave Clark Five, the number-two British band behind the Beatles, whose manager, Harold Davidson, came to see him at his hotel and, based on the success Allen had recently enjoyed with his renegotiation of Sam Cooke’s and Bobby Vinton’s contracts, asked if he could do the same for the Dave Clark Five. Allen took on the task with alacrity, eventually working out a complicated long-term payout of a quarter of a million dollars that would save the band money in taxes and net Allen $80,000 clear. He was full of fire, it was as if he had finally found his true vocation, and he was already looking around for more business and contemplating a return trip to England in the next month or two. But none of it could hold a candle to his unqualified dedication to Sam.
He renewed his suit for the Copa upon his return to New York, but not before approaching Buddy Howe, vice president of the General Artists Corporation (GAC), at Joe D’Imperio’s suggestion. Buddy Howe was, in Joe D’Imperio’s view, the best club agent in the business, with the most powerful agency at his disposal. (GAC was the agency with which Irvin Feld, who had created the original rock ’n’ roll package tour, had affiliated himself some six years earlier. GAC was also the agency that Jerry Brandt had left with his boss, Roz Ross, to join William Morris.)
“Buddy Howe went in and pulled every string,” Allen said admiringly. “He took me around [when] I didn’t know what the hell to fucking do. Buddy was a former song-and-dance man. He said, ‘Just watch my feet!’”
At Buddy’s urging, Allen got Joe to make a substantial commitment on behalf of RCA. “I told him he had to tell Podell exactly what he was going to do. That he was going to buy up the house every night. That we were going for the kids. That we would bring in blacks.” D’Imperio also told Podell how much he, personally, believed in Sam, that he saw in Sam the potential for a whole new kind of crossover success, and what could be more appropriate than that the Copa—faced with box-office challenges in changing times—should be in at the start? Allen, for his part, promised a billboard on Broadway, one that would be bigger than any opening at the Copa had ever seen. In the end, it was, as he saw it, a combination of Buddy’s credibility, Joe’s commitment, and his own bullshit that won the day, with Podell finally agreeing to two weeks at prom time. Allen still hadn’t signed with GAC. He was going to let Buddy continue to prove himself, just like he had had to do with Sam.
SAM HEADLINED a couple of big East Coast gigs, including Georgie Woods’ “Freedom Show of ’64” at Philadelphia’s fourteen-thousand-seat Convention Hall on March 17, with more than a dozen other acts on the bill (including his brother L.C.) and all proceeds earmarked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and three local charities. He appeared on Dick Clark’s Saturday-night show on April 4, newly relocated on the West Coast, and, after a lip-synched version of “Ain’t That Good News,” sat down for a nearly two-and-one-half-minute interview with Clark, an extended sequence within the rapid-fire framework of the show. Why had he turned to pop music in the first place? Clark asked at the outset.
“My economic situation,” Sam said with a laugh.
And was there any secret that Sam could point to as the key to his remarkable string of hit songs?
“I think the secret is really observation, Dick,” Sam responded. By which he meant? “Well, if you observe what is going on and try to figure out how people are thinking and determine the times of your day, I think you can always write something that people will understand.”
What of the future? Was he traveling like he used to? “No, I’m not, Dick. I’m mostly staying home now.”
“Will you produce and write and so forth?”
“I’m producing and writing, as I said, for other people.”
“What could be the greatest thing in the world that would happen to you, if you had your choice?”
“The greatest thing that [could] happen to me? If all the singers I’m connected with had hits.”
To that end he was focused more and more on the future of SAR. Despite all of Zelda’s dire predictions, Allen had organized things back in New York to reach a broader market. He had hired former Scepter a&r head Luther Dixon’s brother Barney Williams to do independent promotion in the r&b field, and he was planning to put Pete Bennett, the slick operator he had found to promote Sam’s singles, on the Valentinos’ new record when it came out. Cash flow had increased, Alex was enjoying being on a regular salary, and SAR’s informal new headquarters and rehearsal space at Thirty-seventh and Vermont was fully operational by now, with an old piano, carpet for soundproofing tacked up on the ceiling and walls, a couple of inexpensive tape recorders and mikes, and, as a finishing touch, the sign that bass player Chuck Badie had ceremoniously scrawled in chalk across the plate-glass window: Soul Station #1.
Harold Battiste and the AFO Executives were in charge, but Sam came down from time to time to check out what was going on. The AFO band might be rehearsing, Johnnie Morisette liked to use the storefront location as a kind of clubhouse, and, except for Johnnie Taylor, any of the other SAR artists was likely to stop by. You never knew who was going to show up. Local kids, well-known jazz musicians, even Sonny Bono, who went back with Harold to the glory days of Specialty. Sonny was working up an act with his new girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Cherilyn Sarkisian, as Caesar and Cleo, and Harold was supplying the song arrangements. Mostly, though, it was a hangout, a combination practice room and retreat, where Harold, newly named head of SAR Productions, scouted for fresh talent, sought to develop more exciting (and more commercial) musical settings for each artist already on the label, and mapped out plans for expansion into other neighborhoods with additional Soul Stations.
Sam’s principal expectations for the moment were centered on the Valentinos. Their March 24 session had ended up focusing primarily on a song Bobby had written with his sister-in-law, Friendly’s wife, Shirley. It was called “It’s All Over Now,” and it had a different sound, a kind of loose-jointed country flavor that Sam found odd at first but soon came to see as an exciting new direction for their music. Bobby thought one of the reasons Sam was so knocked out by it was that it sounded like none of his own songs, and they ran through twelve high-spirited takes as Johnnie Morisette screamed encouragement and beat on a newspaper while generally annoying the hell out of Bobby and his brothers.
They had another song, “If I Got My Ticket,” something which they had been working on at Soul Station #1 and believed in almost as strongly as “It’s All Over Now,” but after a couple of rehearsals, Sam pronounced it “too churchy” and told Bobby it needed more work, they ought to just set it aside until the Womacks had a chance to polish it and turn it into more of a finished song. It could not have come as a greater surprise, then, when Bobby and his brothers showed up at the studio to play on Sam’s session the following day, only to find him exploring the same groove, the same riff they had worked out for “If I Got My Ticket” as the centerpiece of a new number of his own.
“Yeah Man” was a song he had first come up with in England, a dance number along the lines of the call-and-response vehicle he had devised for Cassius Clay, with a large chorus responding to a series of rhetorical questions (“Do you like good music?” “Do you like all the dances?”) with a rousing “Yeah, yeah.” What made it different was the vocal charm, the rhythmic complexity, the agile horns, and booming bass. In an odd twist, Sam mixed in sports metaphors, too, and concluded with a situation far removed from the da
nce floor: “You in the middle of an ocean,” Sam sings out cheerfully. “Come on, baby,” someone in the chorus calls out, as Sam introduces an even more unexpected picture: “Ship going down now [“Yeah, yeah”] / Swim for your life now [“Yeah, yeah”] . . . Swim . . . Swim . . . I’m going home.”
Sam was clearly delighted with the song’s evolution, but Bobby felt sick about it, and his brothers weren’t about to let him forget his turncoat role. “You always talking about Sam, he can’t do no wrong with you,” they said, and all Bobby could think to offer in response was that since Sam hadn’t used any of their lyrics, just a groove that could have fit into any song, you couldn’t really call it stealing. But that just inflamed them all the more. “Yeah, he’s got your ticket, Bob,” Cecil, the youngest brother, said sarcastically, and Bobby didn’t even bother to reply. There was no point in arguing. Maybe Sam and Alex really would turn the Valentinos’ next record, “It’s All Over Now,” into a big pop hit. But then, almost before he knew it, Bobby was caught up in rehearsals for the Copa.
They started out in the half studio Sam had crammed into the little house that he used as a retreat back by the carport. Sam had hired a new bass player, Harper Cosby, to replace Chuck, because Chuck wouldn’t fly anymore after a rocky plane ride into New York for an all-star show at the Paramount Theater at the end of March. Otherwise, the nucleus remained the same, with Clif the unquestioned leader, Bobby installed as second guitarist on a permanent basis with the band’s bass slot finally filled, and June flying in from New Orleans for the start of what would soon become five- or six-days-a-week all-day sessions.
There was just about enough room in the little outbuilding for a couple of amps, a drum set, and five people breathing each other’s air. Sam’s attitude was clearly different than at the start of any other tour. They tried one number after another, going over each one until they were locked in so tight they could practically play the song backward. Gradually a repertoire began to emerge. To Clif’s surprise, “When I Fall in Love,” Nat “King” Cole’s 1957 hit, which Sam had originally recorded for his second Keen album, was one of the centerpieces of the set. Clif had first seen it as “a complete one-eighty from [Sam’s] style,” but he had proven that he had a feeling for the song, and now, with that feeling deepened, Clif was finally convinced it wasn’t “a copy of anybody, it [was] strictly an original.”
They worked on familiar showbiz standards like “Bill Bailey” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” experimented with current folk and country favorites like “All My Trials” and “500 Miles,” and generally woodshedded as Clif guided the band and provided Bobby with firm direction behind Sam’s vocals. “He really knew Sam, and he knew how to keep control of the whole thing. I mean, I could play that cute shit, if Sam hit a note I would hit it right behind him, but Clif held the whole group together so you could have that little cuteness in there. He used to always say, ‘All that little cute-ass shit you playing, just watch me.’ Because I was ad-lib, ad-lib, ad-lib, and he came up from another era.”
The new bass player, whom Bobby dubbed “Hoppergrass” both as a play on his name and because he reminded everybody of a grasshopper with his nervous ways, was working out fine. He played strictly stand-up, but that was Sam’s preference. Nobody got to know him all that well. He never really seemed to relax, and he constantly muttered to himself as he played, but everybody liked the way he spaced his notes, and Sam put an end to all speculation with the pronouncement: “This fucker can play.”
Linda wandered out sometimes to listen to them rehearse. Her daddy would wink at her as he cued the musicians with a snap of his fingers or a shake of his head, and she knew without his ever saying a word how much the Copa meant to him. “It was very, very important. He had in mind how it was gonna go, but he had to make sure it went that way. So he was very, very focused and very, very intense.”
Sam said he was going to get Sammy Davis Jr.’s arranger, Morty Stevens, to write the arrangements for the Copa orchestra. Not René? Bobby asked with some surprise. No, Sam said, Morty had the experience, Morty had Copa experience—if Sammy used him, he had to be the best. The only arrangement of René’s that they would keep was “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and Sam doubted they would use that. In fact, he told Bobby, he was planning to include very few of his hit songs—not “Bring It On Home to Me” or “Having a Party” or “Ain’t That Good News” or even “Nothing Can Change This Love.” When Bobby protested that these were the songs that always got the best audience response, Sam gave him a lesson in geography as well as demographics. “He said, ‘I want to be black. I’m not going to desert my people. But to cross over, you must appeal to that market.’ I said, ‘What’s so important about that fucking market?’ He said, ‘Bobby, you listen to the [r&b] radio station. When you turn the corner, that station will go off the air, and you go right to a pop station. That’s how powerful it is. And white people are not gonna come to the black side of town.’” “Twistin’ the Night Away,” with its little cute story, was the kind of song that always went over with white audiences; “Chain Gang” could work in a medley; and “You Send Me” was the one song that everybody remembered. But he was insistent: “You have to be all around, you have to be universal.”
As they got closer to the opening, they moved into a little studio to rehearse, with Gerald Wilson’s band playing Morty Stevens’ arrangements. Nobody liked the new sound. It was loud and brassy, and it felt like there just wasn’t enough room for Sam. None of them said anything, though, because Sam acted so confident, and nobody wanted to disturb his mood. “I’m gonna kill them fuckers,” he said over and over again, and there seemed no reason to disbelieve him. One day he and June were standing out under the carport having a smoke, and he told June about the billboard Allen was putting up in Times Square. “I said, ‘Man you’re bullshitting me.’ He said, ‘I’m going to have my picture right up there on the building.’ I said, ‘Bullshit.’ He said, ‘Wait’ll you fuckers all see.’”
It seemed strange to still be at home when normally he would be out making money, while the weather was good and people had money in their pockets. But he stuck to his rigid daily schedule of rehearsals, and at night he rambled. The Upsetters were at the California Club off and on for close to a month, staying at the Hacienda Motel on Figueroa, out by the airport. The Sims Twins had a regular gig at Bill Goin’s Newly Decorated Sands Cocktail Lounge and Steak House just a few blocks from the motel, and Johnnie Morisette, too, played the Sands on occasion. Sam and former Pilgrim Travelers bass singer George McCurn (“Oopie”) frequently finished an evening of club-hopping out at the Sands before going on to the Hacienda to party with the band. Earl Palmer, the drummer and L.A. session mainstay who had played behind Sam from his first pop session on, viewed Sam’s attraction to the street with increasing concern. He himself had grown up in the New Orleans demimonde, and he knew all the players in the game, but he wasn’t convinced that Sam did. And he was beginning to feel like Sam was drifting more and more toward the kind of people that could do him no good. He didn’t say anything because, for one thing, he didn’t know Sam that well outside the studio. And even if he had, you didn’t ever try to tell Sam anything. Not even J.W. confronted Sam directly, though Earl would have been the first to concede he possessed greater powers of persuasion than most.
Sam was still seeing the girl he had met with Crume; there was never any shortage of girls within the easy radius of his smile, and he continued to relish the excitement that came from being always on the prowl, the sense of anticipation that never failed to kick in at the thought of meeting someone new. Barbara no longer even bothered to hide her contempt. She had acquired a “friend guy” she had begun to see with increasing indiscretion, a bartender at the Flying Fox and a well-known player. She was even brazen enough to invite him out to the house on occasion when Sam was out of town, sitting around the pool with him, kissing and holding hands with the kids right there. It was a nice arrangement, she liked to
say, but it was strictly an arrangement. She told her husband she was going out with her sister, just like he told her he was going out with the guys. There was nothing Sam could say to her. He understood what she was doing, but he couldn’t stop her any more than he could stop himself. Everyone looked at him like he was their fucking savior, everywhere he went he was an object of admiration and adoration—and yet he couldn’t muffle the growing discontent, the helplessness he felt at his inability to control not so much the world around him as his private world, the inner world that was revealed to no one but him.
IT WAS A TIME OF MARRIAGES. J.W. unexpectedly got married to Carol Ann Crawford, the young woman with whom he had been keeping company for over a year. She had realized she was pregnant only after returning to Hawaii in February, and she and Alex slipped away to Vegas on May 18, a week before her twenty-second birthday, for a quiet ceremony that not even Sam and Barbara attended. They showered the newlyweds with gifts, though, and congratulated Alex on his good fortune—imagine a silver-haired old man who had just celebrated his fiftieth birthday getting such a combination of youth, charm, and beauty—and everyone agreed he had never seemed happier.
Lou Adler married the actress and singer Shelley Fabares three weeks later, in a fancy ceremony at the Bel Air Hotel. Herbie Alpert was there, along with Lou Rawls, Oopie, Alex, recording engineer Bones Howe, and many of their friends going back to the early days at Keen. The bride’s party was dressed in cool mint green, and Sam fronted an all-star group of Johnny Rivers on guitar, Phil Everly on bass, and Jerry Allison, an original member of Buddy Holly’s Crickets, on drums for a brief but memorable guest set.
Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke Page 72
