Bobby Womack Midnight Mover

by Bobby Womack

  ‘Well, Jimi looks at everybody strange, don’t accuse him if you ain’t seen him.’

  Harry said, ‘Man, I ain’t got no money. It’s all my money gone.’

  Out on the road there weren’t any managers or financial advisers tipping you to a hot investment. You got paid, then you stashed your money, then you spent it.

  No one bothered about banks, the government or paying taxes. If you made money, it was yours, but I always had a little back for a rainy day. When I made some extra cash, I’d buy myself a real good ring or watch. Then, leastways, if we got a gig cancelled and there was nothing to eat I could go down to a pawnshop and hock the ring. I’d pick it up when the tour went back through the town.

  That was a thing with black artists: they would maybe have their asses hanging out their pants, but they always wore a ring and a watch. We also kept at the record companies to pay us advances. A little something up front because we knew we’d never get paid royalties or something would go missing. I knew they’d screw me somewhere along the line.

  I know artists, black musicians, who don’t read or write. They make all this money then make the promoter pay them in one-dollar bills. And they get to counting them. Takes all night, they’re still at it at two in the morning so they’re late for their gig.

  I ain’t one to talk because I quit school early, but all I wanted was to read and write and count. If you’ve got that, you got the ball game. I knew college was some place important and if you went there you had a better chance in life, but my father told me he’d never be able to send me there. He said, ‘Since you can sing, that’s better than college. As long as you can sing, you can sup with kings and queens.’

  That’s all right up to a point. I thought all I had to do was read, write and count – be counting a lot of money. Then you start having accountants, attorneys and you set up your business and that business grows to a point where you don’t even understand what you built, because now the business ain’t just about songs no more. And everyone pulls against you and it can break your spirit.

  I was always willing to learn and was never embarrassed to ask, ‘What fork do I eat with? We used to have a fork and a spoon, now I’m sitting here with ten forks.’ But that’s very honest. I would try to live like that, not to do anything to embarrass anybody or embarrass myself. I would always listen to what a guy had to say.

  Anyway, when Harry’s stash went missing, he maybe hadn’t bought that watch or ring. The night after the money was stolen, I woke up on the bus; it must have been late ’cos everyone was asleep. Harry had crept up to Jimi’s seat. I knew what he was going to do. And he did it. Harry reached up and got Jimi’s guitar down from the luggage rack, turned and threw it right out of one of the windows, and that bus was travelling, it was going flat out. The guitar must have smashed to pieces on that highway.

  Man, that broke my heart. I loved my brother, but was also a guitarist and I knew the special relationship Jimi would have had with that guitar. It would have been irreplaceable.

  In the morning, it was a sad scene. I woke up to find Jimi rummaging. He was tearing that bus apart trying to find his guitar. He asked me if I’d seen it, but I couldn’t look him in the eye. I couldn’t look Harry in the eye either.

  Jimi knew it was Harry that dumped his axe, but he couldn’t prove it. Much like Harry couldn’t prove Jimi had stolen from him. For the rest of the tour, they would keep out of each other’s way. Harry would glare at Jimi and Jimi glared back. But that was it. George got Jimi another guitar from someplace, and the bus – and us – rolled on to another town.

  Years later, Gorgeous George gave me a guitar. He told me it was one of Jimi’s first guitars. I could believe that. The strings were all there, but the neck had been broken off and there were nails bashed through it to hold it together.

  I took it to a guy in Los Angeles to get it fixed up. Told him it was Hendrix’s guitar, that he’d broke it one time on stage with Gorgeous George and nailed it back together to play the following night. That was what happened on the Chitlin’ Circuit. The guy in the guitar shop offered me a fortune for Jimi’s old bust-up guitar, but I didn’t deal. Still got it, but I threw the nails out.

  CHAPTER 6

  SOMEBODY SPECIAL

  Sam Cooke asked me to join his band after he got back from a trip to Europe in 1962. He wanted to stir things up a bit. Get some youth and a bit of snap in his band.

  Our first recording together was ‘Twisting The Night Away’, which reached nine on the charts the same year. It was also the closest thing to rock’n’roll that Sam had recorded.

  We’d make a record, then hit the road to take it to the people live. When it came to touring, Sam was like any one of us – he was after having a high time. He closed up shop, and JW Alexander came along for the ride too. All that was left at his record label was a phone and a secretary to answer it. Sam used to say, ‘C’mon, let’s get a couple of months off and then we’ll cut something new.’

  But Sam also had his quiet side. He was a thinker and he loved to read. I always thought that was odd for a rock’n’roller. History was his thing and he read about the Second World War, Hitler, stuff like that. The more he read, it seemed, the more serious he became.

  As soon as we got someplace, Sam would find out where the nearest library was. He pressed me to read too. ‘Bobby, you can make things up and write, but if you read about where you come from your style of writing will be better.’ But I never was a reader. I’d lose patience too easily. Maybe if I had stuck at it I’d be a better writer.

  I was the youngest guy on the road with Sam, just 18. All the other guys were maybe ten years older so I got treated like the kid, by the guys and the women they fucked. I could never get any pussy, no time.

  The women would take one look at my baby face and say something like they got a boy the same age. ‘You got little pubic hairs on your face,’ Sam laughed. ‘You ain’t never going to get laid like that.’ Get yourself a moustache, he advised. He also taught me how to fix a martini – and drink one. ‘Don’t drink too many,’ he warned, ‘they’ll knock you out. And put a cigarette in your mouth.’

  So there I was, still a kid but trying hard to look like a man. I’d practise in front of the mirror, taking a drag of the cigarette and sipping my cocktail. Then I’d walk out and see Sam surrounded by women, beautiful women. I’d watch him pull chicks any night, all night.

  I didn’t matter which women I would try, as soon as I opened my mouth they would ask, ‘How old are you?’ They weren’t going to give up a night of lovemaking with the godfather of soul for five minutes fumbling with the godson.

  I always argued, ‘What does it matter how old I am?’ But it did matter and I still couldn’t get any.

  One time, at a club in Atlantic City, Sam got me in and gave me a pep talk. ‘Look, you know how to be cool, smoke a cigarette and act a little bit adult,’ he preached.

  So I’m sat with this chick and I asked her if she wanted a martini.

  ‘You drink martinis?’ Her eyebrows arched upwards. Even in a dark corner of a club, she could see I was just a scared little kid.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Been drinking them years.’

  So she drank one and I drank one. On the other side of the room, Sam and the band were broke up with laughter at my technique. They took bets whether I’d make it off the barstool and into the bedroom.

  She had another drink, I had two. In fact, she set the pace. We had another, then another. The betting in the corner was going against me. Then she asked if I was ready to go. I got up, stood straight and then fell flat on my back.

  I’d keeled over before I hit the fourth drink. This lady then picked me up and slung me across her back. Oh man, that really embarrassed me. I begged her to put me down, but she insisted I had to go to bed – and she was going to put me there. She’d turned into my mom.

  I pleaded with her to put me down. Sam cleared up on those bets and the band had another good laugh at my expense.

/>   Because everyone else was getting some, apart from me, I didn’t always like hanging with the band. I figured I had earned getting laid. I was on stage same as them when the women would be screaming like crazy. It just didn’t happen when I got off.

  One thing Sam always preached was to get a prostitute. It was a safer option if you were going to play around, although he rarely acted on it himself. He said it was cheaper in the long run to get yourself with a hooker. You pay for what you get and nine months later you don’t have anyone turn up on your doorstep with a screaming kid.

  Jackie Wilson had a problem like that one time. He told Sam all about it. A woman in St Louis claimed Jackie had got her pregnant. He had been tipped off that the cops were going to arrest him, embarrass him in front of this audience. ‘They are trying to take me to jail,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to pay, some baby that’s not mine.’

  Sam told him to calm down. He had a plan. ‘Tell you what to do. The cops will probably grab you when you come off stage, but they don’t know Jackie Wilson from Sam Cooke – we all look alike to them.’

  Jackie wasn’t convinced, said his distinctive pompadour would give it away. ‘I’m telling you, those guys don’t know the difference,’ Sam insisted.

  So that’s what they did, switched around with Sam taking Jackie’s place on the bill, singing his songs and wearing his outfits. When he came off, the cops handcuffed him. He asked, ‘What are you doing?’

  A cop told him, ‘You’re Jackie Wilson.’

  ‘No, I’m Sam Cooke, Jackie’s gone.’

  ‘You’re singing Jackie Wilson songs.’

  ‘No law against that. I can sing Jackie Wilson songs if I want to.’

  Paternity suits weren’t just down to Jackie Wilson either. Sam had a new woman practically every night and it caused more than a few difficulties if Sam hit those towns again on tour. There must have been nearly two dozen children at one time claiming to be Sam Cooke’s offspring, and their mothers all tried to make a claim on his estate.

  I also got a woman in Philadelphia, who said she had a child of mine. A son called Bobby, naturally. It came about after I had passed through New York in the 1970s. I was there to do a TV show.

  At about three in the morning, I made a long-distance call from my hotel suite and this operator came on the line. Told her I wanted to place a call. Told her my name was Bobby Womack. The operator’s voice switched from brusque efficiency to highly interested. ‘Are you serious?’ she purred. ‘The Bobby Womack?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Oh my,’ she cooed.

  Next thing, she had told me her shift was nearly over and she could catch a train over to my hotel in less than an hour.

  She did that and we got into it. I did the TV show, wrapped up the rest of my business in New York and forgot all about it until I played Philadelphia about three years later. About halfway through my act, a little boy ran up on stage, grabbed me around the leg while I sang, looked up and called me Daddy. I didn’t know what to do.

  After the show, his mother – the phone operator from New York – appeared and said she had been trying to contact me. It didn’t seem like the right way of going about it, but I ended up sending her money for about six months. That stopped when I asked for a blood test. She refused. Said it was against her religion.

  There was also a woman who claimed she was my daughter. Said her mom and me got it together in high school. I said I hoped it wasn’t the fifth grade, because I had quit school by then.

  Another time, I was stood backstage and a kid came up to me and said, ‘Hey, Dad.’ He looked like a mechanic, grease all over his clothes. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I told him we should talk about it the next day, see if we could sort something out. The next day, he said, ‘You remember Fifi?’

  Sure I did. ‘Fifi, she used to court my brother, Harry.’

  ‘But you had her one time when Harry wasn’t around,’ he said, ‘and that’s when she got pregnant.’

  Oh, man, they would all try it on and it was so hard to prove otherwise. Anyway, if I did have a child out there that I didn’t know about, I would want to do the right thing.

  Sam’s band always teased me about not getting any action. It made me want to quit. That and the fact they all tried to be my father out on tour. They told me, ‘Do this, do that’ or else ‘It’s late, get to bed. You don’t want to be watchin’ us smoke marijuana, run along to your room.’ Sam was probably the only one not into drugs. His wife, Barbara, had asked him why he didn’t smoke a joint before singing one of his ballads. She told him he would feel great. Apparently, he tried it, but then couldn’t remember the lyrics.

  All the teasing got to me. I’d tell the band, ‘You ain’t my daddy. I’m earning my own money, man. I’ll do what I please.’

  It wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. I was still the kid in the group. Sam would write cheques each week and give them to JW to pass out and I remember one time I was being riled by the group so I tore my cheque up and threw it on the floor in frustration. I was trying to be accepted as a man in a man’s world. The only way I figured I would be accepted as one of the guys was if I started fucking some of the women that came around.

  Although Sam’s tips to getting pussy didn’t pay off, he encouraged my playing. He liked my unorthodox style – the fact that it was so unique, playing upside down and not reading music. He believed that was the way to play guitar, to have a feeling for it. ‘Bobby, you know why you play so good? You play with the spirit, you don’t play with no music. You motivate me, Bobby,’ he’d tell me before leaving to ball some chick while I practised sipping martinis in my room. ‘The way you play, it makes me sing.’

  And that was it. I would just play and feel everything. If there was an open space I would put something in there. Sam would ask why I had put a certain lick in somewhere. I told him the truth. I didn’t know mostly, it just felt right at the time. Because I was a singer too, I would sing Sam’s songs to myself and play the guitar so I knew where to make those little fills. I didn’t know what made me put a tune there, the spirit just hit me and, whoop, there it was.

  Sam had a huge impact on my life. He was like my big brother. He could walk through the door and make anyone feel like they’d known him all their life. At the same time, you had better watch what you said because he was sharp. He told me, ‘People don’t want to hear about too much pressure, that’s why they want us. To entertain them.’ People would spend their last dollar to hear Sam Cooke and avoid their life.

  He also told me not to get angry at people. ‘If you are going to be a star,’ he said, ‘make the audience feel like a star, too. If you see an ugly woman next to five beautiful women, then pay attention to the ugly one.’

  Then, finally one night, at some hotel, someplace, Betty turned up. She must have weighed in at 300 pounds easy. She was fat. A fat schoolteacher. There she was, sat in the hotel lobby waiting to catch sight of Sam because she followed him from one end of the country to the other hoping one night to end up in his bed.

  But the shame of it was that wasn’t going to happen – ever. Sam could get the pick of any girls and if Betty had been the last woman on earth he still would have swerved her. So Betty had turned to chasing Cliff White, the guitar player. Now, Cliff was a pretty big guy, he could handle Betty, but he could also get the pretty women and had no need for her.

  That left me. So this one night I joined her sitting out in the lobby, just the two of us. And Betty said, ‘It’s hard, ain’t it?’ No it wasn’t, but I let it pass. ‘We both got our problems – you’re too young, and I’m too fat.’

  I thought for a horrible moment that Sam might have put her up to it. It could have been another bit of sport for the boys to laugh at. But, Betty told me, she had had enough of running after Sam and Cliff. She knew they were sleeping with all the hot chicks.

  Betty looked pretty down and she was right. If I’d got something else on I wouldn’t have been sat out with a woman twice my age and n
early double my size. ‘Everyone else is off having a good time, why can’t we?’ she asked. Then she turned to me, pushed her tits into my face and asked, ‘You want some of this?’

  ‘Yeahhh,’ I gasped, burying my face in her rack.

  We went up to my room, Betty puffing and panting behind on the stairs. I prayed none of the band would spot me sneaking her up there. I didn’t want them to think I was desperate, even though I was.

  We got started, but it was pretty rough going. Betty was just so big. Man, every time I thought I had it in there, she told me I’d just found a roll of fat. There was just so much flesh it was terrible. I screamed out, ‘Oh, baby, I’m getting ready to go.’

  Betty said, ‘No, no, not yet. It’s not even inside yet.’

  She finally got hold of my pecker and put it in and we started to get something going. And when she came, boy, I’ve never seen a woman in my life come like that. It was like she had turned on a fire hose. She threw me clean off her and off the bed. It was like she knew she might drown me otherwise.

  I was left lying there, between the bed and the wall. I heard her moan and then call down, ‘Did I hurt you, Bobby?’ I told her it was OK, but I was already trying to plan how I could get Betty out of that room without Sam or the band seeing.

  I never told them I had tagged Betty. A while later I found out she’d dropped dead of a heart attack. So she never did get to give Sam any of her loving, but I was glad she gave me hers. She made me feel like a man for once on that tour when everyone else treated me like a kid.

  In 1963, we went out on another tour. It was something like 24 states in less than a couple of months. Hard work. And a lot of it was down South where segregation was still the only way of life.

  Sam had the Greyhound bus for the musicians and three cars out – a Jaguar sports, a Caddy and station wagon – for himself and the headliners. They were Johnny Thunder, The Crystals, Dionne Warwick and Solomon Burke. Gorgeous George was the MC.