Bobby Womack Midnight Mover

by Bobby Womack

  His reply was always the same: ‘Don’t rassle with it. If you rassle with it you gonna get tired and, if you get tired, you get frustrated, and if you frustrated you can’t play, and you can play. So wear that suit. Think of all the great musicians who have filled it and you are filling in for now.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m the motherfucker had the suit belonging to a guy with the clap.’

  Oh, man, it would itch. I’d play the guitar scratching.

  Ray was a womaniser too. He’d chase women harder than anybody, always hitting on the backing singers. One day I heard he had a girlfriend coming to see him. He told me how beautiful she was, gorgeous figure, long legs. She showed up and, man, she was plug ugly.

  Sometimes I couldn’t figure Ray. He was blind and obviously couldn’t tell if an ugly broad told him she was hot, but he would and could play chess. That impressed me. All the band would try and beat him, but he’d kill everybody at the game. I couldn’t work out how he knew where the chess pieces were. I’d lived and worked with the Blind Boys, so I knew a lot of moves blind people had, but I never figured how Ray could do that.

  A blind man playing chess was one thing, but flying a plane – now that was different.

  The first time it happened it tripped me out. I got aboard the rig we were flying on. It seated about 40, and all the band was there. It was Ray’s own plane. And I saw him up front in the cockpit clicking all kinds of switches and flipping buttons. I guessed the pilot let him do that as a favour and then took over.

  I didn’t say anything ’cos no one else did. I thought, ‘They’ll tell him to come back and take his seat soon.’ And, sure enough, Ray ambled back, buckled up and the plane began to taxi down the runway.

  However, as soon as we hit air, the buckle was off and Ray raced up the aisle towards the cockpit. I said, ‘Where’s he going? He never runs like that when he’s going on stage to play the piano.’

  The pilot handed the controls to Ray. One of the band filled me in: ‘Ray always takes over the controls.’

  That freaked me out. ‘Oh, Jesus me. Dear Lord,’ I prayed. ‘There’s a blind man flying the plane. This is nonsense.’

  ‘You don’t need eyes to fly a plane,’ the trumpet player told me.

  ‘You don’t need eyes? So why are there windows in the cabin?’ I looked out at the clouds and then screwed my eyes shut tight and prayed some more.

  Man, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about our flights between gigs. I thought if I told someone they would think I was crazy. A blind man was flying the plane. I had attacks about that. And it was regular; a couple of times I thought about tipping off the airport authorities. Tell them, ‘Man, Ray Charles is driving the plane.’ See what kind of reaction I got from that. They’d probably put me in a mental hospital.

  I told Barbara I didn’t want to play a gig. She said I didn’t have to play, we had enough money. That wasn’t the reason, I told her. The reason was Ray was planning to fly the plane to the gig and we were all expected to be on board. I was a nervous wreck worrying about it. Barbara told me to have another drink. Or maybe I had had enough. I said, ‘I ain’t lying. He will fly the goddamn plane.’

  I’d heard that Ray had tried to drive this old Caddy one day. Just decided he fancied driving it home so he ordered his driver into the passenger seat, got behind the wheel and set off. He hit some dustbins, two or three cars, but luckily no people, before the cops stopped them. Ray swapped seats with the driver and he took the rap. So I asked Ray once why he thought he could fly a plane. You know what he said? ‘Because it’s mine.’ Later, I heard it split in half before take-off. Ray Charles was going down the runway in Miami and the plane cracked like a walnut.

  The flying was one reason I quit Ray’s band. There was another reason, though, and that was Curtis Aimey. I had to room with old Curtis and he was always having seizures.

  After my first experience of Ray flying, I was just glad to get to the hotel. But we had to double. I drew Curtis. Someone in the band pulled me aside and told me to keep a spoon handy.

  ‘A spoon? What do I need a spoon for?’

  ‘You need it for Curtis,’ he said and then he hipped me about the fits and that a spoon would stop Curtis swallowing his tongue. I just got off a plane with a blind pilot, then they told me Curtis had seizures. And I knew we had to fly again the next day.

  Naturally, somewhere down the line Curtis had a seizure. He was a big old guy so I was scared half to death when I tried to get that spoon under the roof of his mouth so he couldn’t bite his tongue off. I tried to wrestle with him and he almost chewed my fingers off.

  Curtis would always want the motel window wide open, even in winter. He’d push it open, snow would fly in the hotel room and I’d close it. He’d push it open again – it could be blowing a blizzard – and I would close it again. He said he couldn’t breathe. I said I couldn’t sleep, not with no gale blowing through the room.

  We’d fight over that. Terrible rows. One time we took the fight on the plane with us. I threatened him, ‘Next time I tell you to close that window, close it or else.’

  ‘I want it open,’ whined Curtis.

  ‘You push it open again, I’ll push you out of it.’

  Ray had taken a break from flying to beat one of the band at chess. But he listened to this bitching session. And Curtis wouldn’t drop it. ‘You push me out the window, you going with me.’

  ‘You can carry that damned spoon yourself. My hand is swollen,’ I raged. ‘I didn’t come here to be no nursemaid; I came to play my guitar.’

  Eventually, Ray cut in, told us to shut it. He didn’t want to hear no more about it. Naturally, he did. From me.

  ‘Young man,’ Ray said, ‘I don’t want to have to tell you again.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘everybody wants to be my daddy ever since I been on the road. When I was in Sam’s band, they all tried to be my daddy. I couldn’t get no pussy; I couldn’t drink. Now I’m in another motherfucking band and it’s the same shit. Ray Charles is my daddy. But no one is telling me what to do. I got to put a spoon in his mouth, I’m freezing to death most nights and I got a blind man flying the plane.’

  Ray said, ‘Now I’m going to slap you if you say one more word. You will get the worst whupping of your life.’

  ‘Well, if you slap me they are going to say it was terrible how that young boy whooped that blind man. He didn’t see the punches coming.’

  Ray didn’t like that.

  I said, ‘If you slap me, you won’t be able to slap nobody else.’

  He was silent for a moment. I could just hear the roar of the engines. Then, he said, ‘You’re fired.’

  I said, ‘Man, I ain’t fired. No, sir, I quit.’

  I got off the plane, went home and didn’t speak to him for a week. But, thinking about the money, I called him to apologise. ‘I was mad at the time, the way I acted on the plane,’ I said. ‘But I’m a professional and I’m still on top of my game. I’m willing to play with you, Ray, as long as you want me to play with you.’

  He said, ‘Bobby, I respect you for that.’

  I never saw or heard from Ray Charles again.

  CHAPTER 10

  FLY ME TO THE MOON

  I was canned by Ray in 1967. Jobless and potless again. Fuck. I was going nowhere as a solo artist.

  I went to Minit/Liberty Records. They asked if I had any songs. I told them I’d got a whole bag full of them. Hang on to them, get yourself in a studio and record a few, the record guys said. I told them I wanted a guarantee. The record company said, you bring us back a hit album, sell some records, we’ll give you all the guarantees you want.

  I went down to Memphis. Wilson Pickett had hipped me to the place. ‘Bobby,’ he said, ‘there are some white boys down there; if you closed your eyes, you could not tell they weren’t black. Those fuckers can play.’

  Those fuckers were playing at a place called American Sound.

  Now Memphis was hot. There was Stax, and across the street American
Sound, which was coming strong. Stax was too locked up for me, but American, run by a guy called Chips Moman, had everyone cutting there. It was just a funky old hole in the wall in a real bad section of town, at the corner of Thomas and Chelsea. But it had a vibe; it all worked. I headed there.

  After breaking from Stax in 1962, Moman had hit Nashville playing guitar on some country tunes before returning to Memphis to start American. He got himself a strong house band, with Bobby Emmons on keyboards, Tommy Cogbill on bass, Bobby Wood the piano player, drummer Gene Chrisman, and Mike Leech who also played bass and arranged strings.

  Life was too easy for me staying in Sam’s old place in Los Feliz. It was robbing me of all my ideas. I could pick up that $50 that Barbara left on the dresser every day and not go hungry.

  ‘I need to feel hungry again,’ I told my wife. ‘I’ve nothing that I’ve worked for myself.’ To get back to the ghetto was what I needed; get young, get hungry. And start producing again.

  So I flew down to Memphis and found myself the cheapest fleapit in town. The Trumpet Motel, one rackety old room, one bed, single and well used with a tiny kitchenette. Junior Walker, BB King, they all stayed there and there were no distractions. Just the music.

  So I asked if I could sit in on the sessions at American. ‘I’m good,’ I told Chips.

  ‘That’s great ’cos we got Aretha coming through and then Wilson Pickett the following week.’

  I dug that no one bothered me there. No one asked me about Sam Cooke or nothing. It was just musicians hanging, playing the best they could and showing each other their tricks. They just knew me as Bobby Womack, guitar player.

  I figured I could really get my schooling from American. It felt right. It was the place to be, I loved the atmosphere and there was a little soul-food place around the corner. Perfect. We cut every day Monday through Saturday, Sundays we were off, but even then we’d be in the studios shooting pool.

  I was especially good at the intros. That’s what made Moman and the others notice me. And I started making good money. They called me cold blooded the way I would slip a guitar break in to make a track sing. Give a crafty hook to the intro, something people don’t forget.

  I played on everything. I mean every-fucking-thing that came into town. Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, Joe Tex, Joe Simon, King Curtis and Dusty Springfield when she was recording Dusty In Memphis.

  We didn’t work like studio musicians. We really got into the artists that Chips brought in, especially if they were songwriters. We would try to play for them, to become their band. We would also try to produce, so it was like you had five or six producers helping the act.

  Every time we went into that studio, we thought we could produce a No 1. And we did. Something like over 100 Top 10 hits in just five years with that same rhythm section. I was always worried that the band members would quit right when we were cooking on a track. They’d go for a coffee break and I thought they’d be calling it a day.

  They said, ‘Man, why you keep looking like that?

  ‘I think you’re going to quit and we’re hot right now.’

  Chips told me to cool it. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘they ain’t going to quit.’

  Elvis Presley must have heard about us, or at least his people had. He called around to cut sides for From Elvis In Memphis. We weren’t that impressed. Yeah, man, Elvis is coming, so what? The guy had had his day, so we thought. It was like, no big deal. But then he showed up. The back door opened and in walked Elvis and we all backed up a step. He looked great.

  He had some kind of charisma that was pretty powerful. And then he had his posse, always matchin’ him. Lightin’ his cigarettes, there’d be seven or eight guys flicking out their lighters, click, click, click. Checking Mr Elvis had enough to drink or eat. See Mr Elvis wasn’t too tired. Well, they got kicked out of there by Chips pretty early on and we could get down to some business.

  We’d hang out with Elvis, chat about school, Memphis, anything. Just a bunch of guys shooting the breeze, talkin’ shit. Someone would name a song and we’d play it. Elvis wasn’t the kind of guy to do another take. He had gotten away from the thing of staying up all night in a studio, and by then was used to having everything programmed.

  It was like he was on stage all the time, he had all his outfits on. The big collars, all the fancy shit. He dressed up all the time. He told me he had to dress that style to be Elvis. That’s what people expected of him, to be on, to be Elvis. I thought, ‘Shit, I bet he doesn’t dress like that at home. I bet he’s in his shorts watching the TV.’

  Elvis was good in the studio. There was always a little bullshit behind everything, we had a laugh. He also bought everything, all the beer, all the food. He even brought in a bunch of songs, but it was all pretty bad. Stuff that sounded like show tunes. They played a demo and Elvis asked what I thought.

  ‘Man, that’s bad,’ I told him. And it was.

  Then Moman pitched ‘Suspicious Minds’ and ‘In The Ghetto’ to Elvis and he loved them. So that’s what we did.

  I worked on Aretha Franklin’s session for the album Lady Soul. I was playing guitar with a cigarette in my mouth. Cool. It was 1967. The track ‘Good To Me As I Am To You’ turned out to be one of my most embarrassing moments. When it came down to the blues, I was never a blues player, but I was doing my best.

  The producer, Jerry Wexler, said he was looking for something else. He asked if I had heard of The Yardbirds. I said no. He said, if it was OK by me, they’d like to get this guy. Get him to play the blues parts. So I said fine, no big deal. But I was thinking to myself, ‘Fucking white guy going to come in and play the blues and tell me, Bobby Womack. I’m supposed to be the man.’

  Eric Clapton was very polite. He had his little guitar and asked if he could use my amp. I told him he was doing the gig, he could have my guitar if he wanted. He didn’t. He started to play. There was nothing I could say. I was looking at him. That motherfucker could play guitar. He could really play. It reached my heart, so I knew it.

  A lot of us blacks have a hard on about white men not having the blues, but Clapton played so hard and I was staring at him and people were looking at me. I’m sure they thought, ‘What do you think now, Womack?’ I stared so hard at Clapton watching him play tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t want to bat my eyes because I knew the next minute I would be crying.

  I went to the bathroom, washed my face and came out. I told Clapton it was a pleasure meeting him. He said, ‘I’m only trying to do what I can do.’

  And I said, ‘You sure did.’ He knew how to play the blues and I could never bend the notes like that.

  My father used to say, ‘They [white folk] don’t have to be around us and we don’t have to be around them.’ I was already totally confused about everything I had been taught when I went to Memphis because all those guys in the studio were white. When we ate, they asked for black eye peas, cornbread, buttermilk on top of the cornbread. I said, ‘You like this kind of food?’

  They didn’t know what I meant, that I thought they were eating black man’s food. But after seeing Clapton I started thinking, ‘What made a guy play like that?’ He must have earned it.

  All of my albums were basically white guys playing on it. I never wanted to tell anybody because I wanted to keep that quiet. This was soul music and people said white people can’t do soul. I got more education playing on those sessions in Memphis and at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. I wanted to say to those white guys, ‘How did you learn to play black music?’

  My own record for Minit was going slow. I’d got myself down to nearby Muscle Shoals in Alabama when Wilson Pickett rolled into town from New York. I hadn’t seen Pickett since I’d been out on the road with him.

  Whatever Pickett said, he stuck by it. No matter. He was tough, but also a lovable guy, a sweetheart, would do anything for you. He didn’t trust a lot of people, however, and – mostly – I don’t think he trusted himself.

  I wrote a string of hits with him; Pickett ended up reco
rding 17 of my tunes, including ‘I’m A Midnight Mover’, ‘She’s So Good To Me’ and ‘I’m Sorry About That’. So I got to thank him for something.

  He called me Womack Stack. I forget why.

  Pickett came out of Prattville, Alabama, born a few years before me on 18 March 1941, a Piscean too. I remember him from the gospel-harmony group, the Violinaires, then he joined the Falcons in 1959 and came up with the song ‘I Found Love’ a couple of years later. That was a big, big record. He left them and went on his own. Jerry Wexler took Pickett to Memphis where he cut ‘In the Midnight Hour’, which hit in 1965.

  Pickett was more comfortable on stage than anywhere else, apart from maybe fishing. He loved to fish, go out on his boat and get away from everything. He was also the kind of guy who liked to hunt; you could tell he was a country boy, no question. He sang, played guitar a little bit, too, and he blew a mean harmonica. He could really blow. He had a unique sound and kept a big band; sometimes carried around 15 musicians, five horns, keyboards, couple of guitarists. I followed after – went on the road with him for a few years.

  I knew I was a hell of a musician. I had a rep as the number-one guitar player, and I liked it the way Pickett had it, the way he sounded. I wanted what he had; I wanted it to sound just like that on my records.

  One of the prettiest songs I ever made was ‘I’m In Love’. Pickett kept telling me to record, but following Sam’s death and me and Barbara hooking up I was still taking flak from everyone in the business, including radio stations. I told Pickett, ‘Hey, man, they see my name on a record and they throw it in the garbage; they don’t want to play my records.’ All the jocks were Sam’s old friends and they thought I had betrayed him.

  Wilson was very talented. Came from a real religious family, all gospel. Once I got to know him, he was a nice guy, but moody. Very, very moody. He wasn’t a man that you could mess with. You could joke with him about something one minute and in the next he’d be on you and trying to kill you.