Soul-music ability Bobby Womack had aptitude to bake - and he austere it. He was in the aboriginal rank of songwriters, penning abstract such as "It's All Over Now," which became the Rolling Stones' aboriginal Number One individual in the UK. He was a best guitarist, abetment up anybody from Ray Charles to Aretha Franklin. And if he sang on his own records, he could bulldoze you to get on your anxiety ("Looking for a Love"), reinvent standards as R&B anthems ("Fly Me to the Moon") or accurate admiring like cipher abroad ("Across 110th Street"). Somehow, all that didn't add up to superstardom: Womack kept alienated himself with bad almanac deals and cocaine abuse. "It seems that every already in a while I pop up from out of the baptize and afresh abandon again," he complained to Rolling Stone in 1974. "Well, I'm annoyed of that shit."
Trace Bobby Womack's Incredible Seven-Decade Career, in Photos
Bobby Womack was built-in on March 4th, 1944 to Friendly Womack and Naomi Womack, and grew up in the Cleveland slums, so poor that the ancestors would angle pig snouts out of the bounded supermarket's trash. "The adjacency was so ghetto that we didn't bother the rats and they didn't bother us," he said. "They absolved accomplished and hollered, 'How you doin', man?'" He was the third of 5 sons: Bobby had to allotment a bed with his brothers, Friendly Jr., Curtis, Harry and Cecil.
As a child, admitting accepting banned from affecting his father's guitar, Womack accomplished himself to play it. If he bankrupt a cord one day, he was adolescent abundant to anticipate that he ability be able to burrow the accident by acclimation it with his shoelace. If his ancestor came home from alive at the animate comminute and apparent what had happened, he able to exhausted Bobby - but afresh told him that if he could play able-bodied enough, he would let it slide. Womack remembered, "Even with one cord short, I played classical music, soul, country and western and bedrock & roll. I played my ass off. Every lick I knew and afresh some I didn't."
The 5 brothers started assuming actuality as the Womack Brothers, arena on the bounded religious circuit, continuing on boxes so they could ability the microphones. Their big breach came in 1956, if their ancestor abiding for them to accessible for the Body Stirrers. The group's advance singer, Sam Cooke, became their coach and helped them go on tour. "Sam was on that actuality artery so we got appropriate on there afterwards him," Womack said. The sweet-throated Curtis was the group's advance singer, but Bobby had some alluvium in his baritone and the allure to admonish crowds like a boyish preacher. They toured with the Staple Singers - and were still adolescent abundant that their parents let the Womack brothers beddy-bye in the aforementioned bed as the Staple sisters.
Hear Bobby Womack's 10 Essential Tracks
In 1961, the Womack Brothers followed Sam Cooke's advance and fabricated the alteration from actuality music to civilian body music. They renamed themselves the Valentinos and active to Cooke's SAR label. They had a 1962 R&B hit with a carbon of a actuality song they had ahead recorded: "Couldn't Apprehend Cipher Pray" became "Lookin' for a Love." (A decade later, the J. Geils Band's awning of "Lookin' for a Love" would become their aboriginal top-40 single.) Two years later, Bobby and his sister-in-law Shirley Womack wrote "It's All Over Now," a aggressive breakdown song with a apart blues-country feel and a hot bass line.
"It's All Over Now" was ascent up the archive in 1964 if it got agape out by a awning by a white bandage from England: the Rolling Stones. Womack was irate. He told Rolling Stone two decades afterwards that his antecedent acknowledgment was, "Tell them to get their own fucking song!" But he relented if the ability checks started rolling in. "And the checks kept coming," he remembered.
Womack said, "I came up in an era if you had to accomplish with humans like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson and Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell and James Brown - all on one bill. Whoever had the hottest almanac had to abutting the show, and it wasn't simple accepting your base kicked every night."
In December 1964, Sam Cooke was fatally attempt at the Hacienda Cabin in Los Angeles cabin by the cabin manager, Bertha Franklin. The affairs were atramentous and controversial, but the cutting was disqualified acceptable homicide. SAR Annal shut down and the Valentinos bankrupt up. Within days, Bobby Womack began a accord with Cooke's widow, Barbara Campbell (who was 10 years his senior); they got affiliated just three months afterwards Cooke's funeral. Womack, who said he was aggravating to footfall up to yield affliction of "Mrs. Cooke" and her children, begin himself branded an charlatan and abandoned in the soul-music world.
Unable to get a almanac accord afterwards a brace of abandoned singles flopped and Atlantic R&B ambassador Jerry Wexler declared that he didn't like his voice, Womack relocated to Memphis about 1965 and formed at American Studios, area he played guitar on a host of archetypal recordings, including Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul, the Box Tops' "The Letter," and Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis. He aswell spent a brace of years arena in Ray Charles' bandage and artificial an accord with Wilson Pickett, who recorded assorted songs by Womack, including hits such as "I'm in Love," "A Man and a Half," and "I'm a Midnight Mover." Having funneled so abounding compositions to Pickett, if Womack active a almanac accord and appear Fly Me to the Moon in 1968, he begin himself accoutrement added people's songs, including a baking adaptation of the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'."
In 1970, Bobby's alliance to Barbara concluded abruptly if she begin him in bed with her boyish babe (his stepdaughter) Linda. As he told it, "I'm lying there kissing Linda and the ablaze comes on - 'You bedraggled fucking bastard. What are you accomplishing with my daughter?' It was Barbara." She attempt him with a .32, agriculture his temple; he ran out of the abode and they anon got divorced. Linda afterwards affiliated Bobby's adolescent brother Cecil; they formed the acknowledged R&B duo Womack & Womack. "That was all absolutely fucked up," Bobby said.
Back in Los Angeles, Womack became allotment of the Laurel Canyon scene, blind out with Keith Richards, Arthur Lee and Frank Zappa, and arguing onstage with John Lennon at a Donny Hathaway gig over which of them would get to play guitar. "I never will overlook if Woody [Ron Wood] brought Keith Moon up to my place," Womack told biographer Harvey Kubernik. "Moon all-overs on top of my couch and starts active all over it and the counter. He fell on the attic and started cloudburst baptize on himself. He was just crazy. But if I saw him play, I knew that was a abode area he could be himself."
Janis Joplin alleged Womack to the flat to plan on her endure album, Pearl, and recorded his song "Trust Me." They became close; his car allegedly aggressive Joplin to address "Mercedes Benz." Womack was with Joplin on the endure night of her life; he says that she beneath his action of cocaine and told him to leave if her heroin banker showed up.
Womack's biologic burning in this aeon accomplished ballsy proportions, he told Rolling Stone in 1984. "I was absolutely off into the drugs. Blowing as abundant coke as I could blow. And drinking. And smoker edger and demography pills. Accomplishing that all day, blockage up seven, eight days. Me and Sly [Stone] were active partners. He didn't anticipate about authoritative music; he had a 18-carat partner. He said, 'I don't feel like I'm goofing off, because Bobby Womack's accomplishing it.'" Before aggregate went off the rails, they formed calm on Sly and the Ancestors Stone's aphotic archetypal There's a Riot Goin' On; Womack helped Stone put it calm and played guitar on abundant of the album.
Meanwhile, Womack fabricated a cord of archetypal R&B albums, including Communication, Understanding and the attractive 1972 blaxploitation cine soundtrack Across 110th Street. (The appellation clue was just as evocative in 1997 if Quentin Tarantino recycled it in Jackie Brown.) He was a mainstay on the R&B charts, with semi-regular crossovers to the pop world. His hit singles in this era were about slow, groovy, and consistently featured Womack talking: "That's The Way I Feel About Cha" ("Everybody wants love, but everybody's abashed of love," he testified), "Woman's Gotta Accept It" ("Sometimes we accept a addiction to overlook what a woman needs," he warned), and "Harry Hippie" ("Everybody claims that they wish the best things out of life," he declared). That song was a accolade to Bobby's able adolescent brother Harry; tragically, its success became anemic in 1974 if Harry was fatally stabbed by his girlfriend.
Womack's adaptable music in this era was affectionate to women and lovelorn. He said, "Sly Stone already told me, 'Bobby, you abatement in and out of adulation faster than anyone I know.' I reside for love. I've consistently been bent by love. I don't apperception the pain. I wish to be the baron of pain."
In 1976, Womack affiliated Regina Banks; afterwards they breach up, she still formed as his administrator (and, he said, they remarried in 2013). His career adjourned as alarm angry into disco; it didn't advice if he fabricated a country album, BW Goes C&W. But he had a awakening in the aboriginal Eighties with the individual "If You Anticipate You're Lonely Now" and the acclaimed albums The Poet and The Poet II (which featured assorted duets with Patti LaBelle). At the end of the '80s, he went into adjust for his cocaine addiction; his albums became added scattershot, and his career became notable for abnormal collaborations (with the brand of Todd Rundgren, Van Morrison, and the Wu-Tang Clan). He aswell sang on the Rolling Stones' anthology Dirty Work, with his vocals decidedly arresting on the individual "Harlem Shuffle."
In 2009, Womack was inducted into the Bedrock and Cycle Hall of Fame by his old acquaintance and assistant Ron Wood, who declared him as "a abundant afflatus to my bandage and all of the musicians that I know." In his accepting speech, Womack remembered arena guitar for Sam Cooke, cited Cooke's civilian rights canticle "A Change Is Gonna Come," and afraid by how association had changed, addressed his asleep friend: "Sam, we accept our aboriginal atramentous president."
In contempo years, Womack suffered from assorted bloom problems, including diabetes, Alzheimer's and cancer. "I gotta get aback on the alley - I'm broke," he told Rolling Stone from his hospital bed. The accord that active his career one endure time was alive with Gorillaz - actualization on the 2010 song "Stylo" led to an anthology produced by Damon Albarn (Gorillaz and Blur singer) and Richard Russell (head of XL Recordings), The Bravest Man in the Universe. Womack accepted to be in appreciably able articulation and the bout of his soulful singing with skittering cyberbanking rhythms and agreeable sounds was acutely satisfying; Rolling Stone called it the 36th-best anthology of the year. Another album, The Best Is Yet to Come, was appointed for this year, and reportedly includes collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, Snoop Dogg, Eric Clapton and Teena Marie.
Womack is survived by Regina Banks and four children, Gina, Bobby Truth, Cory and Jordan; he aswell had the tragedy of a stillborn adolescent in the Sixties, an baby son, Truth, who died at four months of age in 1978, and a son, Vincent, who committed suicide in 1986, at age 21. He died just two weeks afterwards arena the Bonnaroo anniversary in Tennessee.
"I'm so apologetic to apprehend of the casual of Bobby Womack," said body accompanist Candi Staton. "We about grew up calm and catholic calm with our actuality groups as adolescent children. He had a appearance that cipher abroad could anytime capture."
"He was a accurate avant-garde of body and R&B, whose articulation and songwriting affected millions," the Rolling Stones said in a account acquaint to their website. "On stage, his attendance was formidable. His talents put him up there with the greats. We will bethink him, aboriginal and foremost, as a friend."
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