by Bobby Womack
I wanted to be the leader of a gang. That was the only thing I saw in my neighbourhood that got respect. When those gangs put on their shirts and walked out, everybody would hit the floor. And I thought, ‘That’s respect.’ My father was a big man, with big arms, but he wouldn’t go up against a gang.
So I reckoned I could make it in a gang, or maybe work it like this guy in the neighbourhood called Candy. Everyone in our quarter would get up at six, seven o’clock in the morning to go to the factory. Not Candy. Candy dressed real nice, sharp suits, and he smoked marijuana. He was always fixing his clothes, a real tall good-looking fella.
I couldn’t figure it, but he told me that his ladies brought him money. They would all come along, four or five at a time, hand over the cash, bat their eyelashes and purr, ‘There you are, Candy.’ Candy reasoned he was called Candy because he was sweet. I guess it was as good a reason as any. And a good name for a pimp on the hustle.
Naturally, Pop couldn’t stand Candy. He called him a good for nothing. He said, ‘You think he is something? Well, he ain’t.’
I told him the guy was smart, he doesn’t work. I asked Candy one day which of his ladies brought him the most money and he laughed and told me they all did. That pimp had those women right where he wanted them, in competition. And they tried to turn more tricks each week for Candy.
So I thought, ‘Man, I’m gonna make my scratch as a street hustling gang member or do it just like Candy with a hot stable of hookers.’ And that was it. That was my ambition.
Now, my old man had other ideas. He was an honest, hard-working john and he wasn’t going to see his kid end up as some kind of shakedown artist. He wanted the best for me, all of us, but he didn’t know what was best: all he knew was he had his five boys. I knew he’d pray to God, ‘I got these boys. I told you I wanted them to sing gospel,’ but not one of us was showing any interest in gospel or any other kind of singing – or so he thought.
The old man worked in the local steel mill, but he still played guitar and sang, and found himself a gospel qroup. There was Roy, Harold, Joshua and Mr Hampton and they called themselves the Voices of Love. My father was used to running things at home, so naturally he figured he could run that group.
These guys would come over to the house and rehearse every Wednesday night. Harold used to sing real flat, ’cos Harold was always drunk. My father was churchy so he hated booze, but they got on mostly. They used to stand in a circle and sang with their arms locked around each other’s shoulders: Harold singing flat, my dad trying to boss them.
Those nights my mother would bake doughnuts, cake and cookies, and she put them out on a big old tray with a big coffee pot for the guys. She’d say to us boys – I was about six – we could have anything they left, but they never left anything, ever. We were always mad about that and began to hate the Voices of Love, scoffing our grub.
When they left, we picked over the few crumbs on the plates and took a couple of sips of cold coffee. Then we’d start mimicking the Voices of Love. We’d each assume one of the characters in the group. Harry always wanted to be Harold, singing flat.
That’s how we started out, imitating Dad’s group. It was fun, just mucking about. We didn’t see it as singing, but we sang in their voices and, if one of Dad’s friends had a cough that night or a jigger in his neck, we would copy that too. We had them down to a tee.
We’d nibble at those crumbs, lick the dregs of cold coffee and then go through their routine and I’d complain every time. ‘They can’t sing, they ate all the cake. And the one with the bad breath, Roy. Oh my God, I don’t know how Dad can stand being near him singing.’
One night we were mocking the group as usual and my father caught us out. The window was open and he could hear us joking around and singing like him and his friends. He stood for a while there, watching and listening. We were too busy having fun to notice when he stepped into the room. ‘You sassing my friends, boys?’
That was it; we all thought we were in for a thrashing. Instead, the old man asked us how long we’d been singing like that. ‘Ever since you started singing with that group, Pop,’ I said. ‘And Harry sings better than Harold.’
My dad wanted to buy us stage outfits right there and then. He was so proud now he’d finally got his singing sons, and from then on we were singing every day. If we didn’t, we got to feel the back of his hand. Whack. That was the old man’s way; he would give us a clout if we didn’t know the song he’d taught us the day before. He was on a mission to scare the songs into us.
Gospel was the thing in the ghetto so it was only natural the songs we kicked off with were gospel, the kind of tunes my dad knew. We wouldn’t have known the songs unless he’d belted us around like that. Maybe we would have gone off in different directions.
Dad was so serious. He could never give any one of us a compliment without ruining it. He’d maybe say something nice, but ten minutes later he’d be pressing us to learn four new songs. ‘The first one that don’t get it will have to strip his clothes off,’ he’d threaten. I thought, Man, I don’t want to be hanging out naked. So we got to know those songs real fast.
As well as the steel mill, Dad used to cut hair to make ends meet. One day a man came around and asked for a short back and sides, but he didn’t have the money for a trim. What he had was a proposition. ‘Womack, I need a haircut and the only thing I got to pay for it is a guitar. Is that helpful for you?’The deal was struck that my dad would trim the guy’s hair four times and then the guitar was his. That’s how the Womack family got its first guitar.
My old man was proud of that guitar. Every night he came home from busting a gut at the steel mill, slipped off his boots, lit up his pipe and sat on the rocker out on the porch strumming. When it wasn’t being pressed into use, the guitar was left propped up against a corner in the living room.
No one was allowed to touch it. No one. Dad called us all in one day and said, ‘See this guitar right here? It is very expensive. If I ever catch anybody not just playing it, but touching it, I will whip you into the middle of next week.’
So he left it there in that corner and we left that guitar alone. And then every time Dad came home from work, he would pick it up, polish it down and go out on the porch and play it. We’d be brought out to sing with him. This was every night and we hated it. We were still kids – I was about six or seven now – and wanted to be out in the woods playing, not rehearsing gospel songs.
So one day we were all back there arguing about which of us had got us into this singing. We wished we hadn’t mocked the Voices of Love. And then someone picked up that guitar. We tuned into a radio station and started playing along to the songs. We liked Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, BB King, Slim Hawkins back then, but they never got played on the radio then so it was probably some gospel, but at least we weren’t singing.
The game we played was whoever had the guitar had to keep up with the song playing, but when they hit a bum note they had to pass the guitar on to the next brother. He would keep it until he missed a note.
It got so I would bust a gut getting back from school to get hold of that guitar before any of my brothers. I was sick of waiting for them to miss those chords. After a while, I got to keep playing that guitar along to the radio so long Friendly or Cecil would complain I’d heard the song before and try and snatch it out of my hands.
Some nights I would be out on the porch myself, one eye on the fret, the other watching the corner down the street waiting for my old man to turn it. I was left-handed and didn’t realise I had the guitar upside down. I’d practise and then, if I saw Dad coming, I’d race in the house and prop that guitar right back in the corner.
The old man would come in from work, pick up the guitar, run a rag over the wooden body and then run a suspicious eye over me. ‘Say, has anyone been touching my guitar?’ he asked.
I would look innocent: ‘No, Dad. I didn’t see nobody.’
My mother would laugh. She knew he’d catch me one day and
she said she wouldn’t be able to save me.
We lived a couple of blocks from the Majestic Hotel where groups like the Dominoes, the Cadillacs and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers stayed. I would go up there with my father’s guitar stuck under my arm, track down the guitar player in the group, knock on his door and ask him to show me a chord. I would walk all the way back home with my hand gripped to the guitar neck in that position, then I’d show my brothers. ‘Hey, I got something new, listen to this.’
The guitar playing just came to me so quick. I started listening to a guy called Floyd Cramer. Cramer had begun playing by ear too. He had backed some Elvis Presley tracks and put out his own honky tonk tunes. In ’58, he had a little dip at the charts with ‘Flip, Flop and Bop’. I wanted to play my guitar the way he played his piano. That’s how I created my sound through listening to him.
Because I played left-handed – I never reversed the strings or anything – with the guitar upside down and always peeping around the corner to watch for my father, everything I played was unorthodox. It sounded that way, too, but to me it also sounded real good. I played with the spirit, not following any music.
I got good. Then one day I was out playing and, zing! A string broke. Man, I panicked. I was fool enough and young enough to think Dad wouldn’t notice if I used the lace out of my shoe to tie around the busted string. I put the guitar back in the corner and counted down the minutes before he got home. My mother asked why I’d stopped playing so quickly. I told her about the string and she shook her head sadly. ‘I told you not to play it,’ she said. ‘You know Friendly, when he comes home the first thing he’ll do is go get his guitar.’ I knew that all right.
Sure enough, he stepped up on to the porch and said, ‘Bobby, fetch me my guitar.’ I tried to persuade him to lie down and have a rest, gave him a little neck massage, but he wasn’t falling for it. ‘Nah, I think I’ll play my guitar.’ I stalled him, but he got suspicious. ‘Hey, you aren’t up to any mischief, are you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, get that guitar for me, then,’ he said, pointed me inside the house and settled into the rocker with his pipe.
I fetched it and walked back with the broken instrument real slow. That shoelace looked right out of place. The old man would sometimes fall asleep on that porch, and I hoped it would be the same tonight, but he was sat there wide awake when I brought the guitar back. He cradled it in his arms, started to tune it, turned the tuning pegs and then, twang! Dad looked down to see he had been thumbing a ratty black cotton lace. ‘What’s this?’ he growled. ‘Where did this string come from?’
My heart had jumped out of my throat. And by then my brothers caught on what had happened and crowded around to watch the sport. Dad shouted to Mom, ‘Who has been playing with my guitar?’ He only had to take one look at my shoes.
‘Bobby. You come here now. What did I tell you? I said don’t touch my guitar. I knew you would be the one.’
Dad sent me off into the backyard to get the longest switch I could find and ready myself for a tanning. My brothers followed me out and watched as I tore at some branches to find a cane. Harry asked if he could have my dinner that night, and for the rest of the week. They knew I was in for a lashing and wouldn’t be in any fit state to sit and eat.
When I got back with that switch, my old man’d had a change of heart. ‘Can you play this thing?’ he asked, holding out the broken guitar. ‘If you can play it, I might let it slide. But you got to be real good.’
Man, I played Andre Segovia, Elmore James and BB King. Even with one string short, I played classical music, soul, country and western, and rock’n’roll. I played my ass off. Every lick I knew and then some I didn’t. When I finished, Dad was in shock. He couldn’t believe how good I had got and realised he’d been real selfish holding on to that guitar for himself. The next morning, he promised to take me down to the store so I could pick out my own guitar. My brothers all chimed in then, saying they played, too. So now my dad had got himself five guitar players.
The old man decided to quit his group and concentrate his energies on us. It was his dream from way back in Charleston to have his singing sons. He’d got that, and now he found they played guitar, too.
Dad borrowed some money from his union and got us all kitted out in uniforms. Rehearsals picked up. We sang in church every Sunday and started touring as the Womack Brothers, just like my old man’s group. We’d turn up at religious shows all over and play with groups like the Five Blind Boys, the Caravans and the Pilgrim Travellers.
School took a back seat. We’d get back from a show at ten in the morning, still in our uniforms and dog tired from the night before. We were always late for school and often sleeping in class, and the teachers would cuff us across the head with a ruler to wake us. They were always threatening to talk to the old man about our behaviour, not understanding that he was the problem. I said, ‘Dad, we got to be in on time, get into school with the other kids.’ But he didn’t care where we were at so long as he had his boy group.
My old man struggled to get enough scratch together to buy guitars and amps for us. I was beginning to realise that church of his wasn’t looking out for us none. The church was always making collections and the pastor kept fat with those chicken dinners he got served up, and I figured that was OK because they were supposed to be higher people and that was the way it was. The church didn’t mind us putting on shows and they would get a nice little cut from all the money when the hat was passed around, but later, when my father went cap in hand to borrow money for a new car or musical equipment, they’d say there was nothing left in the collection box.
Old Grover always had some words to say about what my father was doing, too. He said, ‘Your father, he’s the same as any churchman, he ain’t doing nothing but pimping you. Man, I could take y’all down to the Gold Coast, we could go door to door and you could walk out of there with $100 in your pocket. But your father, he’s waiting on Jesus to come and save you.’
Him and the old man would get to fighting over it. Grover also had his uses for us. He’d drag me over to some girl’s house to serenade his latest lady friend and get himself inside her bedroom. ‘C’mon, Bobby,’ he pleaded. ‘Just sing a little song to my friend Sarah here and you got yourself an ice cream.’
I’d do my piece and this girl would melt. ‘Oh, Grove, that’s so cute. I can’t stand you.’ And he’d be dragged in there with his pants around his ankles.
When my father got to hear about that, he told Grover that if anyone wanted to hear us sing they could always come down to the church. He warned him off. ‘Grover, don’t you try and take my kids and lead them to Satan.’
Grover just whistled, scratched his head and said, ‘Satan? These boys don’t belong in church. The only God I know is in my pocket right here. When these boys get a little older they’re going to sing rock’n’roll.’
I started to see my old man in a different light. I didn’t think he was an Uncle Tom, but he sure let those church folks use him. If we earned any money, the church would hand him a jar full of coins and that’s how he brought it home – like he’d been beggin’ or living on handouts – but we’d earned that money by rights. My mother once took that jar full of change and poured it out all across the living-room floor. My old man gave her a whupping like she was a little girl. He then picked up every single nickel.
We could be making $100, maybe $150 a night by the early 1950s. The family got a few little luxuries, like a TV. We also got our first telephone with our own number, Henderson 19708. Man, I thought that was so neat, having a phone.
Then, in 1953, my old man told us he wanted us in good shape because the Soul Stirrers were coming into town.
His idea was to ask the Soul Stirrers if we could open the show for them. I thought, ‘Who the hell are the Soul Stirrers?’ I was nine then and I didn’t realise that they would change my life around.
CHAPTER 2
A CHANGE IS GONNA COME
Sam Cooke
was 22 when I met him. He’d been plying his trade in itty-bitty gospel groups for a while before hooking up with the Soul Stirrers. He’d only been with the group a couple of years when he came into town that day.
What struck me straight off was how good-looking the guy was. He was pretty. Later on, he cut a song called ‘Wonderful’, and he’d make his entry on stage combing his hair and singing, ‘Wonderful, he is so wonderful…’
Sam was about 165 pounds, real slim, about five foot ten, maybe a little more. He looked cool, wore sharp outfits. Always neat. Always. He didn’t need a suit to look smart. I wanted to look like him, but in our raggedy duds it wasn’t going to happen.
Cooke had replaced a guy called RH Harris. Harris had a beautiful voice, but he was a legendary womaniser, a real lover-man with a baby or pregnant woman in practically every city. He’d turn up in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, any city, and be hit for child support, so it became impossible. He wouldn’t show up and it began to hurt the group, so Sam stepped in.
Sam had been born 13 years before me, in 1931, down south in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was the son of a Baptist preacher, but moved up to Chicago when he was a baby.
He joined the Soul Stirrers when he was just 20 after singing around Chicago’s southside with groups like The Highway QCs. One of the Soul Stirrers had been rehearsing with the QCs and got to know Sam, so it made sense when RH left. Sam was a whole new breed; he went into a church and did things other gospel singers wouldn’t dare do.
To begin with, Sam tried to imitate old RH. That was a mistake, ’cos RH used to yodel, beautiful yodel. You’d think you were in Switzerland. Sam tried it because he thought that’s what people expected and wanted, but it wasn’t his thing. When he did his own thing that was good too. Different, but good, and audiences liked it so he stuck with it.
Sam finding his own style was a good lesson for us, not just for singing, but also in life: that you needed to find your own path and create your own style – not follow someone else.
