by Bobby Womack
When I asked Barbara about it later, she said Sam couldn’t raise a match when he got home. It could have been that with Boyer, the broad he picked up, he thought, ‘I’m fucking her tonight. I’m going to knock this broad off.’
Franklin worked at a little cheap motel. It had been robbed three or four times before and the cops had told her to buy a gun and get a licence. Sam walked in, on her time, to get his pants. Sam had $750 in his pants and $1,500 dollars in the trunk of his car. He was shot in the chest, with a .22. A .22 is a dangerous gun. The bullet doesn’t go all the way through, it moves.
Sam died with his arm up trying to protect himself from blows. Franklin had beat him with a broom or a big mop. She broke his arm in about three or four places and she broke his nose. He was trying to get up when he fell against the wall. All Sam was doing was trying to get home. Franklin said, ‘I didn’t know he was Sam Cooke. He was my favourite artist.’ She couldn’t understand what Sam Cooke was doing down in the ghetto.
Then, right after, Sam died, man. That’s what scared the shit out of me. I was riding along in my car and heard that duh, duh, duh. I knew it was ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, the label released it two weeks after Sam was shot. He was dead 11 December, the single came out 22 December.
At the end, as the song played out I thought, ‘Oh fuck’. I knew that shit wasn’t supposed to happen. Sam hadn’t wanted it out. But he was dead and I guess the label figured, ‘Why not?’
When we got back to LA, the first place I went was Sam’s house. It was only a couple of weeks since I met up with him in his pyjamas. Now the place was a madhouse. There were people everywhere. Sam’s wife, Barbara, was totally shocked. I didn’t know her well, but I wanted to talk to her, just to say something, anything. But everyone around her said she wasn’t seeing anyone.
The day of Sam’s funeral was sad. It was an early afternoon. The Rev Charles preached the service.
There were a lot of stars. Not Sammy Davis Jr, though. I wondered why Sammy didn’t show. Ali was there. He was mad. He was waving his hands around and told anyone listening – and that was most – that he didn’t like the way Sam was taken out. Or the punishment dished out to Franklin. If it had been Frank Sinatra, he said, the cops might have done something. He was saying the establishment didn’t care about Sam living or dead.
If there was a person with a magical spirit, Sam was it.
Sam had charisma and a very special way to get into people’s hearts through his songs and his music. But Sam wasn’t just a singer, he was a leader, and he was getting ready to try to shake things up, to raise the consciousness of the world and stop prejudice. If he hadn’t been cut down, he probably would have become a politician.
I cried throughout the whole service, but even with my eyes full of tears I could see Sam didn’t look like himself. He looked like he’d had a real hard life. I guess it was the brutal way he died.
A lot of the musicians from Sam’s band were in the same car with me. I was crying my eyes out, serious sobbing, until somebody said, ‘Man, shut the fuck up.’ Then the complaining started. ‘I didn’t get this’ or ‘I didn’t that.’ Another guy said, ‘Sam promised me a gas station.’ Even Cliff had a beef. It seemed like everyone thought they’d been stiffed.
That bothered me. I thought, ‘Christ, is it going to be like this when I die?’ I didn’t want that. It didn’t seem like real friends talking. Their mood also made it hit home that Sam was dead. It was like losing my mom and dad at the same time, that’s how badly I was affected.
No 11 December gets past me. As the date approaches, it builds up. The nearer it gets, it starts to feel very dead inside me, like a funeral. Then it arrives. I’ll watch the whole day go by and notice everything that happens.
Each time I get myself on my own, nobody around. I might go out to the beach, some place quiet like that where I don’t hear no phones or nothing. Then I’ll walk around and I’ll think, ‘Damn, I wonder what Sam would be doing right now.’
I might laugh at when he used to tell me to get myself a little martini so I would look grown up. Have a cigarette on the go. Or the first drink he got me started on, Jack Daniel’s. ‘Just sip it,’ he instructed.
He had a huge influence on me. I knew it. I admired him. I know I wouldn’t have gone through all the drugs and booze if he had been alive, because I promised him. I told him I would never run astray. And I would have stayed that way if he’d lived.
I was always afraid to sing Sam’s songs. I ran away from them. I always thought they talked about me. ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ made me so humble. You know you can’t be real cool on stage if you bat your eyes and tears come out. That’s what happens if I think about Sam. So I thought, ‘Let him sleep.’ Then I asked myself, ‘How can I stay away from someone who influenced me so much?’ Staying away from him, his songs, that made me uncomfortable too.
After Sam died, Barbara had him put in a crypt. You needed a key to get in there. She gave me a key, and she had a key. She said, ‘Let’s buy our crypts now.’
‘Now?’
She said, ‘Bobby, you have to get ready for death’. Maybe, when I was ready. But then? I wasn’t much into my twenties at that time.
However, Barbara went ahead and bought us each a place either side of Sam. We never got to use them ourselves.
CHAPTER 8
WOMAN’S GOTTA HAVE IT
A little after Sam’s funeral, maybe a few days, I was at my apartment. JW Alexander swung by. He told me he knew how I felt about Sam, but the show had to go on. He said he’d spoken to RCA about making me a star, how I could write and sing. ‘We got to keep this thing going,’ he said. ‘Just keep going to keep the doors open and selling records. That’s what Sam would want us to do.’
Sam had wanted me to go back with my brothers, but his death spelled the end of The Valentinos.
Oh, man, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t thinking about any of it. Not launching a career, nothing. I told JW there was no way I could do that. ‘I can’t think about it, I can’t believe Sam is dead,’ I said. ‘I can’t think about nothing at the moment.’
Alex then cut to the chase. He said he had $65,000 of the record company’s money in an account under his and Sam’s names and he was willing to put that up to back me. He said, ‘You could take the band and keep working.’
I skipped around to see Barbara as soon as he was out the house and laid the 65-grand story on her; what JW had said. She dismissed it out of hand. ‘Well, I don’t believe that,’ she said. ‘And number one you wouldn’t know nothing about it.’ She treated me as just a young kid – I guess I still was.
‘That’s nice of you to tell me,’ she continued, ‘but, number two, I know everything about my husband and you don’t have to tell me.’
‘All you have to do is check it out,’ I suggested.
She thought about it. Kept thinking about it. And then she called the bank. The account was there. Because it was in Sam’s name, they agreed to turn it over to her. After that, Barbara began to gain some sort of confidence in me. I was still the kid on the block, but I’d gained her respect.
I didn’t hear what she said to JW about it. Or what JW had to say about that; he didn’t say nothing to me, but I figured he must have been pissed. Just before Sam died, he had stumped up the cash to buy everybody in the band new instruments. Barbara had tried to find out who still owed on them. Recalling their reactions at the funeral, I advised her to forget it. ‘Let the band have them,’ I said. ‘They earned them.’ A gift from beyond the grave so to speak. So I became the middleman between her and Sam’s old group. That got me closer to Barbara.
A few months after Sam’s death, The Valentinos surfaced uncredited on the Checker Records recording ‘I Found A True Love’. Then we went to Chicago and Chess put out a couple of records, ‘What About Me’ and ‘Sweeter Than The Day Before’, in October 1966.
Friendly had already bailed out and then so did I. After that, The Valentinos didn’t go anywhere beca
use they didn’t have enough energy. Harry was very laidback, but Curtis was even more so.
One of the things I missed most was going on stage with my brothers. I missed, more than anything, being able to sing with them. I didn’t see it as a blessing then because we were just doing it, singing and playing. It was natural. I didn’t know anything else. After working the business for a few long years, though, I realised there was nothing to compare with singing with those guys. You can make it alone, but the group is so different. It has got so much to give and one person can’t give what all of you can give together.
I don’t know what we would have done if we had stayed together, but it would have been great. All those minds working for songs and ideas. Egos play a big part whether you’re brothers or not.
I’d heard Barbara was seeing someone else – it had probably been going on a while. Sam played around behind Barbara’s back a bit; more like a lot. Sometimes he said, ‘I’m gonna get a divorce.’ Sometimes he might have said that around people that maybe he shouldn’t have said it around and it probably got back to Barbara.
I went up to the house. There was a guy there, name of Al. A bartender. Al was standing in the middle of the kitchen, Barbara in the doorway. After Sam died, I don’t think Barbara had too many friends. She was feuding, always had a feud simmering on the side with the Cooke family. Now she was by herself, she had a lot of money and I figured she was wide open to be taken. Al could have been there to play Barbara. Either way, I thought he was no good for her.
What bothered me more than Barbara playing around with a guy was that Al was wearing Sam’s ring. His watch, too, and Sam’s robe. The man was barely cold and Al had his stuff.
Al was a big guy, six-two easy, and around 250 pounds. Just huge, muscular, not an ounce of fat. He made about two of me. But this ring thing pissed me off. I told him to leave – and leave Sam’s stuff on the side.
We stared at each other. I may have only been 20, but already in my mind I wanted to be in the position where Al was at. Al didn’t look happy. He glanced over at Barbara and she said, ‘You heard what the man said. You’d better go.’
Al slipped off Sam’s stuff and left.
Barbara seemed amused. ‘You just run off my boyfriend.’
I played it cool. ‘He had no place here,’ I told her.
‘Well, you got to take his place now.’ She said it just like that.
I didn’t know what she meant at first. It seemed pretty fast. I told her she could call me at my Inglewood pad any time.
Not two days later, she was on the phone. Told me there were some songs on Sam’s tape machine that he’d been working on, but she didn’t know how to work it. ‘Would you come out here? See what’s on the tape and tell me what you think about it.’ She added, ‘There might be something you could use.’
I thought nothing else about it. OK, I thought one thing. I was always a little scared going up there to the house – at night – after Sam passed away because I believed in ghosts. I knew Sam well, but much as I loved the man I would have been freaked out if I’d seen a vision of him standing in the living room.
So I promised Barbara I’d get up there the next day, during the day. Barbara was having none of that. She wanted me up there around eight. She told me she had some other people coming over. Turned out it was Rene Hall, the arranger who had worked on ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’. When I arrived, Rene was already there with his wife, Sugar. Sugar and Barbara were real tight.
We put away a few cocktails and a little something to eat. The evening was up and running. It felt comfortable that someone else was at the house. Rene rapped about music, and the girls were chatting about stuff. After a while, I kept seeing Barbara giving Sugar these looks. Just sly little glances. Sure enough, Sugar suddenly announces she and Rene were a little tired. They were off. I went to go with them, but Barbara reminded me about the tape recorder.
This machine was in a little office, off the side of the house. We went out and I could see it was easy to work. Just on and off. Nothing to it. I was bent down, adjusting the tapes, trying to make out like it wasn’t so simple a child could have operated it. I could feel Barbara standing close behind me, so close I could feel her body.
The rest happened like The Graduate. All those years I never got no pussy, but now here was Barbara Cooke – Sam’s wife – blowing hot in my ear. I was scared shitless. My hands were shaking, fiddling with the tape.
‘What’s the matter? You scared of me?’ she asked.
‘Oh no, Miss Cooke.’ I was always polite. ‘I ain’t afraid of you.’
‘Yeah? Well, I like a man to look at me while he talks.’
I kept fiddling with those tapes and buttons. The next thing I know, she’s gone. I had a breather from the tape machine. But she was back within a beat, this time dressed in a heart-stopping red robe. It went all the way down to her ankles, but wasn’t exactly tied tight.
Something started to happen. Maybe if I’d been a little more experienced I could have controlled what followed, but I didn’t. I had no control. Then, I told myself it felt right – it was supposed to happen.
We kissed. We went into the house. I don’t know what happened to those songs. At that moment, I couldn’t care less. I was going to step into Sam’s shoes. I felt that I was taking care of Sam, too. I wouldn’t let Barbara down. No player was going to fuck her over. I’d look after her, the house, the kids. That was a big promise.
We slid into the living room; we’re on the couch, on the table, on the floor. And she asked, ‘Why don’t we go in the bedroom?’
‘Do we have to go in there, Miss Cooke?’ Still called her Miss, used to it.
She told me off again. ‘Call me Barbara, Bobby.’
‘OK, Barbara.’
‘Let’s go into the bedroom.’
‘OK.’ I tried to sound like I was cool, but my heart was right up there in my throat.
After our first night together, Barbara said, ‘I want you to come back every day.’
I saw that a lot of stuff Sam left was sent to his brothers. But I kept an old briefcase of his and Sam’s binoculars, which he used when he went to the races. They were brand new, but he’d scraped his name on the rim – Sam Cooke. Still got them.
I also kept hold of his make-up kit. Sam had always been complaining about the raggedy dressing rooms so he had this case made up with everything in it. He also had a pair of golf shoes lying around. Barbara told me he’d tried a couple of rounds, found it too slow and left the shoes at the back of the closet. I had no use for the golf shoes.
Barbara also let me try out some of Sam’s clothes for size. We were about the same build, him and me. They fitted. I didn’t own a suit, and now I had dozens. Dozens of Sam’s suits. I always admired the way he dressed.
Things started to go fast. Barbara’s plan: she was going to help with my career. I was going to help her.
‘It don’t look right now you coming up here all the time because people are going to be talking,’ she said.
I said, ‘They already talking.’
She said, ‘Why don’t you marry me?’
‘I don’t think I’m old enough.’
Barbara was around 30, 31. Ten years older. I was shocked, the way she asked me. She said, ‘Well, you ain’t got nothing else to do, you got no job, you ain’t working. There ain’t nobody booking you anywhere.’
I thought about it.
‘Why don’t you marry me and make it legal? And then people won’t think we are just sleeping together.’
‘OK, I’ll marry you, Miss Cooke.’
‘If you call me Miss Cooke one more time… my name is Barbara.’
‘OK, OK, Barbara, let’s get married.’
I packed up what little I had and moved up to the house on Ames Street.
We went downtown the next week, down to the LA courthouse. All the press was there, photographers, TV cameras, lights, the whole ball of wax. It was jam-packed, it was chaos. Like a major event. There were a
lot of dumb things said. Stuff like: ‘He could be almost her son’ or ‘Did you already go with her?’ Barbara said nothing and she told me to say nothing.
My oldest brother Friendly Jr came along to give us support. Barbara’s sister, Emma, came along too.
We were ready to go. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t yet 21. Had a week to go. Oh, man, I was totally embarrassed.
The press didn’t want to wait around – or come back a second time. They told me to call Cleveland and get my parents’ permission. I said I wasn’t going to do that. Barbara said, ‘Call your parents.’ I was my own man; I didn’t need my parents’ consent. Wasn’t sure they’d give it neither. I knew my father wouldn’t agree. I told them all it wasn’t going to happen that day. We got back in the car, waited a week – ’til my birthday – and then went back. I was just 21 years and one day old when I got married the first time. It was two or three months after Sam’s funeral. That’s when the problems started.
Barbara had a crazy five-year plan. She said, ‘If you promise to give me five years, I will give you a lifetime. You know, whatever you need to do, I just need you to walk with me here.’ She needed that support. ‘I need you to walk with me through this estate; you seem to know a lot of these people and you can read them and tell me who I should talk to and who I can trust. I trust you, Bob. You’re not out to get anything.’
That was true. However, I had been planning to be with her forever, not five years, but she was telling me just five years, that’s all she needed. ‘I wouldn’t put you through it no more than that.’ She said that right from the beginning because she thought that I was going to leave, like it was too good to be true.
Then we started getting the hate mail. We were getting all kinds of dirty stuff through the post; someone even sent a box with a doll in it. Like a baby in a coffin.
Barbara had a baby by Sam called Vincent. He tragically drowned in the pool at the front of the house about a year before Sam’s death. He was only a toddler when he died.