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Blind Boys and Picket Fences
Talk about being at the right place at the right time. Bobby Womack has just about done it all. He played guitar for Sam Cooke as a teenager. He wrote "It's All Over Now." He buddied up with a young Jimi Hendrix. And he helped create Sly Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On and Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul. He's even made a few damn good soul records himself, like the No. 1 "Woman's Got to Have It" and the 1981 album The Poet. Here he remembers his early days on the gospel circuit, and how Sam Cooke became the first crossover superstar.
VH1: Can you talk about how your career started?
Bobby Womack: My father had seven brothers and sisters. They had a group called the Womack Family. After we left Charleston [South Carolina] and moved to Cleveland, he said that he wanted his own group. My father waited a long time to see if there was any signs of his sons singing. We asked our mom not to tell him that we could sing, because we knew he was a singaholic. He would have sung us to death! One day he caught us. He worked in the steel mill then, and to make extra money, he would cut hair in the neighborhood. He happened to go do somebody's hair, came back, and caught us singing. That's how the group started. We started singing around all the churches. Sam Cooke had just joined a group called the Soul Stirrers. We opened up his show, and from there we just kept going singing. There was the Majestic Hotel in Cleveland, and all of the pop groups and rhythm 'n' blues singers would stay at that hotel. We'd follow them. I remember playing guitar for a gospel group called the Five Blind Boys. I went from there to playing for everybody.
VH1: What influenced your singing style?
Womack: I listened to my father a lot, and a singer named Archie Brownlee, that was the lead singer of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. I idolized him. Then I heard Sam Cooke. So between all of those guys, I guess there was me.
VH1: You traveled a lot in the gospel circuit of the '40s and '50s. What was it like?
Womack: It was like what they do now when they take the buses out. Only we went out by car. We'd sit four in the back, three in the front, or four in the front. Man, I don't know how we could even do it, traveling from one city to another! Often, if you had a pretty good name, like the Soul Stirrers or the Pilgrim Travelers or the Caravans, they would charge at the door for you to get in.
VH1: What were the shows like? Were they intense?
Womack: Oh yeah. If you're singing gospel and you didn't do good by the people, you didn't get the next date. I worked because if you were opening up for the Soul Stirrers, one of the hottest groups around, you had to be able to perform. Everybody was trying to outdo each other. For instance, there was two sets of Five Blind Boys, and they were big drawing crowds. They were friends offstage. But when you got on stage, they would literally tell you, "I'm kicking your ass tonight." Even now I carry that with me. To go onstage, I got to do my best.
VH1: How did Sam Cooke become the leader of the Soul Stirrers?
Womack: R.H. Harris was the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers. This was a guy that Sam admired. But traveling around, Harris got to a point where he couldn't perform in different cities because he was always under arrest for child support. He had children everywhere. You take a guy like that into court and say, "How could this guy be in all these places?" They'd say, "He does one-nighters onstage and one-nighters with the women." It got so bad that he couldn't go on the road anymore. That's when he got Sam to replace him. He was giving Sam voice lessons, and he said, "This kid would be good for the group. He can travel."
VH1: What happened when he joined the band?
Womack: There would be loads and loads of young pretty women, all there to see Sam. It was like a rock 'n' roll show. The preachers didn't like it, but they liked the fact that he was able to draw the younger generation in the church. He brought a lot of new ideas. That was the first time I noticed that they were using bands. It wasn't just groups with no music, or maybe just a guitar. Sam brought two guitars and he added bass and drums to the Soul Stirrers. They would dress in silk suits. Everybody would dress alike, but very sharp. They may wear white tails. Anything that was real flash and sharp. It brought a new style to gospel.
VH1: So was Sam like gospel's first sex symbol?
Womack: I think so. He was a good-looking guy, and chicks chased him to the car just like they would be chasing some big rock star today. They was constantly chasing him. He would turn around and chase them back! Onstage, he would play with them. He would look at women and wink, go down and touch them on the knee. They loved it.
VH1: What happened when he crossed over from the gospel circuit into the pop charts?
Womack: The first pop song he did was "Wonderful." The title was changed to "Lovable." The gospel version went "Wonderful, God's so wonderful." He came out with "Lovable, she's so lovable." That wasn't a big record for him. The record that took off was "You Send Me." That sold about 3 million copies. That was what you would call an "impact record." Everybody knew the song.
VH1: What was the gospel community's reaction to this change in material?
Womack: The gospel world was waiting on something to happen bad to Sam. Because they felt he betrayed God. This was very serious. I'm smiling about it now, but that's just the way it was. They always kept that at the back of their minds. When this happened or that happened they would say, "That's it." And Sam didn't live a long time. Sam was about 30 when he was killed.
VH1: So did the gospel establishment think that his death in 1964 was a judgment on his forsaking gospel?
Womack: The gospel world had forgotten all about it by then. That had faded because he had so much success. People with common sense asked, What is this man doing wrong? Talking about "Another Saturday Night" and "Having a Party," there was nothing wrong with those songs. It was just reaching the mass of people, and everybody still went to church on Sunday.
VH1: Was it a hard decision for him to make, to decide to cross over like that?
Womack: Yeah, it was hard. When he put out his first record he used a different name - Dale Cooke. He felt if he went under Dale Cooke, and it didn't happen, he could go back to gospel and they wouldn't know he had left. But his voice was so noticeable that as soon as he sung the first note, you knew it was him. He was a little afraid. It's like having the whole world turn against you. When the gospel people said, "We're through with Sam," you know you couldn't come back.
VH1: Do you remember him making the decision and talking to you about it?
Womack: No. See, Sam was older than me. I was like a bystander fan. But he took [Soul Stirrers vocalist] James W. Alexander with him. J.W. was older than Sam, so he figured, "Well, if God's gonna get me, I'm taking Alex with me. Because Alex is older than me and Alex should know better!" I think that gave him a lot of confidence, having a much older guy with him - old enough to be his father, really.
VH1: Was it a difficult decision for you to cross over from gospel into pop?
Womack: No. I was looking at Sam and he was doing very well. I said, "Hey, that's what we got to do, if I'm gonna buy my mom that picket fence, you know?" Gospel was so small. You couldn't think about buying houses or doing anything for your parents. This was just a big audience. I was able to get the picket fence for Mom and get me one, too!
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