Bobby Womack
A preacher and a poet. By Geoff Brown.
“I had a bad vibe about it… until I saw the royalty cheque.”
IT WAS A SOUL man’s life from beginning to end, rammed full of incidents that would find a home in one of the many classic songs he’d write. Take, for instance, the episode with which Bobby Womack opened his ghosted autobiography, Midnight Mover. His wife, Barbara, catches him in bed with her daughter from an earlier marriage, Linda, the child of Womack’s great mentor Sam Cooke. She shoots him and he hot foots it out of the house, barely escaping with his life let alone his trousers. I’m A Midnight Mover, indeed. And Womack had the gospel-raised voice – a mix of muscle, gravel and grit in a honey-rich tone – to breathe vivid life into this and everything else he sang.
One of five brothers, Bobby was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1944 and was part of The Womack Brothers, gospel singers who soon came under the influence of Cooke, first recording sanctified sounds and then, as The Valentinos, R&B and soul, a switch to the secular that caused a great rift with their devout father, Friendly Sr.
Womack’s writing for his groups included Lookin’ For A Love, later a hit for the J Geils Band, and It’s
All Over Now, famously covered by
The Rolling Stones. “I wasn’t happy about it,” he told me, “I had a bad vibe about it… until I saw the royalty cheque.” Songwriting and session guitar work would sustain Womack through some fallow times. First, Cooke was shot dead in December 1964 and his distraught young wife asked Womack, who was even younger, to look after her. They quickly married, outraging both gospel and soul fraternities. Work dried up, he split The Valentinos and took what session jobs he could. Ray Charles hired him as a guitarist, he worked closely with Wilson Pickett, and by the end of the ’60s was recording under his own name again and working with friends Sly Stone and Janis Joplin on their key recordings.
Disco, drugs and lazy material derailed his career towards the end of the ’70s, but he continued to be a valued collaborator – right to the end, as Damon Albarn/Jamie Hewlett’s virtual band Gorillaz invited him to their Plastic Beach album and tour.