by Bobby Womack
My father was all for putting us out anyway. He wasn’t going to provide shelter for the devil’s music. He cut us right off. He didn’t want none of the money from our hit and he didn’t want us, neither. Some money had begun to roll in, though not exactly royalty payments. In point of fact, I don’t believe we ever got paid royalties from SAR. Sam would pay us an advance or slip us some cash for a new suit or something like that, but it wasn’t super accounting.
I didn’t even look at it that Sam was screwing us. The whole business was about screwing. The way I looked at it was there was a choice: you could be screwed with grease – like with Sam and SAR, who might not have given us all the credit and money we deserved, but looked after us – or get screwed with sand. That was painful.
I never got the credit for the part of ‘Lookin’ For A Love’ that I wrote. It didn’t seem to matter at the time. Every time I took breath, a new melody or song came out. I knew there was going to be more hits. I was certain of that.
Sam wired us some cash to buy a car and drive out to California. I didn’t even know where it was. Had to look on a map. Sam told us to get a Chevrolet station wagon or something reliable like that. That just didn’t rock me. I wanted a Cadillac. I was still thinking like our neighbourhood pimp Candy. I saw one on a lot for six hundred bucks, bought it and pocketed the change for a rainy day in LA.
All us brothers heaped in the car and cousin Henry came along for the ride too. Henry was older than us; he always told us he was our uncle because he wanted to be with my father’s brothers, but he was our cousin. He was an itty-bitty guy, but with a great big voice.
My dad didn’t want any part of it and he wasn’t going near that car, but Henry figured five kids with more than two thou in their pockets would be ripped off before we arrived in Los Angeles.
Sam told us to stick to Route 66. Stay on the 66, he said, and you’ll get to LA in three days. But, man, that Caddy was busted up. It broke down not 30 miles out of Cleveland. We had flat tyres, the headlights went out, there was a hole in the gas tank and then it started to rain. When we turned on the wipers, they went clean across the highway.
A guy came with a big old truck and pulled us about another 100 miles to get us fixed. That ran us another $900 just to get the car back on the road. We took it in turns sleeping in the car because we reckoned motels would either not take us or would cut into our stash. Then somewhere in Arizona we all got real sick because there were fumes coming out the gas tank.
It took us two weeks hard driving to make it to California. When finally we hit LA, that old Caddy wouldn’t roll no more and we ended up pushing it down Hollywood Boulevard. We stopped by a payphone and called Sam. He was near scared to death. We were way past due and he thought we’d caught a pile-up on the highway. ‘Where the fuck have you guys been?’ he was yelling. ‘Your old man is going crazy.’ Friendly had told Sam all kinds of shit like he’d kidnapped his sons. Dad was threatening to cause all kind of trouble.
Of course, when Sam saw the car he knew right off why we’d taken so long. He put us up in The Dunbar, a hotel down in south Central. All the entertainers used to stay there, three square meals a day. Sam paid up front for a few months and told us to start searching for an apartment. We ended up staying over a year in that fleapit. ‘Lookin’ For A Love’ made The Valentinos hot. People were surprised that it wasn’t gospel, that the Womack boys were doing rock’n’roll. We followed that up – in January 1963 – with a couple of Curtis’s tunes – ‘I’ll Make It Alright’ with ‘Darling Come Back Home’ on the flip. I sang lead on ‘Darling…’
The next single, ‘She’s So Good To Me’, came out in July the same year. It was backed by ‘Baby Lots Of Luck’, but we had no luck. It tanked.
By then we had got our own sound. It was a distinctive sound because we played our own instruments, played and sang as a unit. I think they might have given us the wrong name, though. The Valentinos didn’t really describe where we were at with the ladies, which was basically nowhere. Rudolf Valentino must have been laughing; there wasn’t one lothario amongst us.
In fact, I’d only had one sexual experience. When I was about 12, I had started screwing an older woman. Actually, she was a fair bit older: 32. Married, too, to a guy named Wolf who drove a bus for the city and lived a few blocks away. Her name was Ernestine, or Tina for short. She had a daughter about my age so when I went over to their place Wolf naturally thought I was messing around with his kid.
Tina was the lady who taught me everything about sex. How to give head, how to get head, everything. And I mean everything. Serious. I fell for her, I think I might even have been in love, but I was a 12-year-old kid so what did I know? Definitely had feelings though.
I’d get round there and she had a bath running for me. I’d have a bath and she would give me a rub down and then rub me off. She’d have some nice clothes laid out that she had bought me. Then I’d go to school. Later, I thought, ‘What had a woman in her thirties been doing with a punk-ass kid?’
This whole thing pissed my father off, but I ended up sticking with Tina all the way through school and right up to when we left Cleveland to go to California when I was 16. When I told her I was going to join Sam Cooke, she was resigned to the fact that I would never go back. I promised her I would move her out after me once I got myself situated. But I didn’t.
We wrote to each other for a bit and I asked if she would leave Wolf. She never did. A few years later – she can’t have been 40 – she was dead. That killed me. She was my first love.
We may have struck out with women, but the group was ticking over good. We’d chalked up a couple of hits and I was now a pro musician. That’s what I thought, anyhow. I had a black and white guitar the old man had got me, and a little matching amp. I thought I was slicker than slick.
So slick I travelled with the guitar hung over my shoulder, gunslinger style. That’s what I saw myself as: a hired guitar. One day, out walking near Vine Street I spied a bunch of musicians – black and white guys – chewing the fat in the shade. Man, they looked cool, dressed in linen, some sporting straw hats. Each musician had his instrument under his arm or cradled in his arm like a baby. Some were polishing the cherry-wood necks on their guitars or carefully wiping the sweat and spittle from their trumpet mouthpieces.
I watched fascinated from across the street. Suddenly my old black suit – shiny in the pants through wear – looked way less than slick against their duds. Where once I was proud of my guitar, now I was embarrassed by the two-bit instrument in its ratty pillowcase.
A guy opened a side door to the building and ushered them in and I hopped across the street to join the back of the queue. No one raised an eyebrow. We were led into a studio, but it was bigger than anything I’d seen or been in before. We trooped into a massive soundproofed room, set out with scores of little wooden chairs and over the back of each seat was draped a sheaf of music scores.
I bagged myself a chair near the other guitar players and tuned up, trying to look like I’d been raised in a recording studio. But I was nervous as hell they’d find out I was just a punk kid trying to cut it in the session world.
I had seen a couple of the sharp session men raise a smile when they eyeballed my broken shoes: they were white, to match my guitar. I didn’t look like no pro musician. Then I saw a sign chalked up over by the piano. It said – Session One: Dean Martin. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my, this is the big league.’
The guys had set up. Then they wanted to know which part I was going to play.
‘Do you want to take the first part or the second part?’
I couldn’t read music. The sheets in front of us looked like Chinese. I said, ‘Why don’t you take the first part, let’s see how you play that and maybe I’ll take the second.’
We got playing, me following, and it worked OK – for a while. We were cooking, but every time there was a hole in the music I’d fill it. And I’d fill it with whacky-wah-wah blues notes. I didn’t figure the holes wer
e there for a reason, I was just bullshitting all the way through.
I made a whole load more fills when the guy in charge called stop. Everyone stopped. This guy, Earl Palmer, said, ‘I want you to go through that bit again, the horns sound a little strange and the guitar player with the black suit on…’ I looked around and Palmer was pointing at me. ‘Yes, you. Can you come over here for a little while?’
There was a chuckle from a couple of the old salts playing trumpet as I unstrapped my guitar and made my way to the front in that tatty suit. I realised I didn’t look a bit like any of those pros in the room. It was a long walk all the way to the front.
Earl asked who called me for the session. I played it like a dumb ass and said the same guy that had called everyone else. I could feel those musicians’ eyes burning into my neck. Earl pushed me and I finally admitted that I’d just chanced upon the guys in the street outside and joined them. ‘I’m trying to get on my feet,’ I pleaded.
He told me I had to be in the union if I wanted a call. But he fished out some bucks and told me to pack up my guitar and little practice amp.
The thing about it was I didn’t want to take down my gear in front of the other musicians, but then Palmer called a break and when the other musicians took five for a cigarette I snatched up my guitar, yanked the amp plug out the wall and ran out. As I took off past the session guys huddled in the shade on Vine Street, I could hear the laughter roar after me. I rounded a corner, dumped the guitar and sank to the floor. Man, this musician thing was hard.
Many years later when I was one of the best guitar players around, I found myself on another session with Earl Palmer. During a break in recording, I sidled up and said, ‘You remember me?’ He screwed up his eyebrows. ‘That Dean Martin session,’ I reminded him. ‘The guy with the white shoes.’
Palmer laughed. He couldn’t believe he’d thrown Bobby Womack out of a recording session. ‘You’re not him, are you?’ he asked. ‘That scrawny kid with the shiny suit?’
I nodded. ‘Oh yeah, that was me.’
CHAPTER 4
ACROSS 110TH STREET
Sam Cooke thought the best way to lick The Valentinos into shape was to put us out on the road to learn our craft. We’d be bottom of the bill, but we had some pretty cool teachers. One of them was James Brown.
Sam knew what he was doing. He told JW Alexander that The Valentinos needed to get hardened up and broke in. They decided Brown was the best man for the job.
It’s not like Sam and Brown were close. They respected each other, but I knew Sam thought Brown was an arrogant motherfucker, a real rough ghetto kid. He also believed Brown was going the long way around to getting with the white audiences and Sam reckoned he didn’t have that kind of time. He wanted to go straight to the source.
The feeling was mutual. Later, James Brown told us that he was jealous of Sam. Sam was handsome and tall. James Brown wasn’t.
Either way, Sam knew that James could do a job on us, and he and JW booked us with Brown on what became a boot-camp-style musical apprenticeship. Sam’s parting shot to us was: ‘Don’t fuck with James Brown. He will give you boys hell.’
James Brown was more than a decade older than me, born in South Carolina in 1933. His old man pumped gas and he spent most of his early years in his auntie’s brothel. After school ended for him, he picked cotton, shined shoes, washed just about everything from dishes to cars. Then he was busted for armed robbery and served some jail time, which is where he met Bobby Byrd.
Byrd played baseball against the prison team, which James played on as pitcher. Brown had hoped to turn pro when he ended his stretch. Later they used this as inspiration for one of their stage routines. All the band wore baseball caps and carried baseball bats. They’d sing and dance, strike one, bop and then go on to another song. You’d think you were watching a baseball game.
Once he finished his jail time, Brown started to work with Byrd, a pianist, in bars and clubs around Georgia. Later, he joined Byrd’s gospel group, the Three Swanees, who later became the black music revue the Famous Flames.
In 1956, James Brown took over the Famous Flames. Bobby Byrd was supposed to be James Brown, but James wanted to be number one. James had more razz and was a better singer. He was always loyal to Byrd, but back then he treated him just like a puppet.
Byrd and James were about the same height and they would dance together on stage, but off stage James would twist Byrd anyway he wanted and I saw Byrd cry ’cos of the stuff James Brown did to him.
By the time I met James in ’62, he was already a big performer with a couple of hits under his belt, ‘Please Please Please’ in 1956 and ‘Try Me’ in ’58. In October 1962, Brown was hooked up to play a seven-night stand at the Apollo Theater in New York’s Harlem.
The Valentinos were also on the bill, sharing the stage with soul man Solomon Burke, the Texan blues guitar player Freddie King and the comic Pigmeat Markham. Brown played five shows a day and we matched him.
They stuck us in the worst ratbag hotel, the Cecil on 118th Street in Harlem, just a few blocks south of the Apollo on 125th. There used to be a famous jazz club on the ground floor where Thelonius Monk, Count Basie and Duke Ellington had played but when we checked in to the Hotel Cecil – like the rest of Harlem – it was checking out.
The neighbourhood was a trip. There were burned-out cars, burned-out apartments and burned-out people. Hustlers, hookers, boosters, freaks, users, boozers. One hard leg was propped up against the wall of the Cecil. She was dolled up in a platinum wig and must have been about six three in her stilettos, raggedy old tights and ass-skimming skirt. She was white under all that mascara, eyeliner and rouge. Never had a white chick. Besides Tina, I hadn’t had anything.
We must have looked like a pack of runts on a day trip to the big city when we fell out on to the sidewalk in front of her. Five young hicks not long out of short pants. But we were hot to trot and we had money and that’s all that whore was interested in. Sam had given us $75 to get us to New York and see us straight for a few days before we started earning from the show. And I was holding it.
Before we checked in, I walked up to the lady and asked her how much. My brothers were behind me pleading with me not to blow the whole $75. They said, ‘Bob, let’s save it, man, it’s for food and stuff. C’mon, man.’ But I had only thing on my mind and that was some good white pussy. I told them, ‘Man, all my life I need this, trust me, I know what I’m doin’.’
The whore waved me away. She said, ‘Damn fool, I got a kid your age.’ I could believe it. She must have been the wrong end of her thirties. ‘Get out of here.’ But I was insistent. ‘I don’t want to hear that shit. Look, baby, how much is it? You could use this money.’
She asked how much we’d got and the $75 changed her mind.
‘That’s a different story then. What do you want?’
I said, ‘I want it. You know what I am talking about.’
‘You’re going to give me the whole $75?’
I told her she could earn 50 bucks, but for that she’d have to do all my brothers too. She looked behind me to see a little line of black brothers snaking back across the sidewalk. They’d quietened once there was a prospect of getting laid.
‘All these guys?’
‘That’s right, there’s only four of them.’
She wanted the money up front. Now, I was nervous ’cos I’d never done it with a white woman. And this lady was way more experienced than Tina. If my old man knew what we were doing on our first night in New York, he would have killed us. ‘OK, Mr Big Mouth,’ she said, pointing at me. ‘I’ll take you first.’ But I pushed Cecil forward. ‘I wanna go last,’ I told her.
We skipped up to her room in the hotel. Cecil went in, came and trotted out within minutes. She’d given him a hand job and said, ‘That’s done, that’s easy.’ Harry was up next. He came out smiling. And then Curtis and Friendly Jr gave it their best shot.
Then it was my turn. I stalked in nervously and she had my pants
around my ankles in seconds. Whipped it out and we got down to business. It wasn’t love making. It wasn’t tender, and it didn’t take more than a few minutes, but it did the trick. I finished up and the hooker said, ‘Nice doing business with you.’ For the five of us the whole adventure had lasted probably less than half an hour, but we all felt like we’d become men.
Two days later, we found out we were ill men. Pissing started to hurt. I was in the bathroom trying to take a leak and it hurt like hell. I wasn’t going to tell my brothers something wasn’t right. Then Cecil piped up. He said, ‘Man, I don’t know what kind of pussy that white woman had, but it must be dangerous.’
We all laughed at that and I said, ‘Why?’
He said, ‘It’s ’cos I’m still coming. I got stuff still coming out my dick.’
Next day I woke up and there was pus all over my shorts. Then we were all groaning, especially when it was time to take a leak.
I thought Solomon Burke might be able to help us. Burke was a father figure backstage. He was a former boy preacher in Philadelphia, but then he’d hit on mixing up soul and R&B. He was some years older than us, so we looked up to him.
Now the thing was, they didn’t have no elevator and we were right up there on the top floor of the Hotel Cecil. The bigger the star, the lower the floor number. James Brown was on the first floor. Solomon was just one flight up from him and it seemed like a thousand steps as I hopped gingerly down to his room. I was damn sore.
You could tell Solomon’s room because there was always a cooking smell coming from it. As a sideline, Solomon was a one-man chef and vendor. He always had something going on. He made his own popcorn, which he sold himself. And backstage or up in his room he always had a big old stove cooking away with chicken or burgers. He used to carry around saucepans, frying pans, dishes, cups and all kinds of shit, sometimes offering up grub to hungry musicians. ‘Hey, man,’ he’d tell you. ‘You don’t have to go to no restaurant to eat, you can have my chicken right here and it’s five cents cheaper.’
