Bobby Womack: My Autobiography - Midnight Mover

Author:Bobby Womack [Womack, Bobby]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Individual Composer & Musician, Music, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General
ISBN: 1844541487
Google: hT05AAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B009R69UEU
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2006-04-06T12:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

FIRE AND RAIN

After splitting with Ray Charles in 1968, I was on my own, fending for myself. I didn’t have my brothers around me so I became a solo artist. I signed on at Minit Records. The first hit, ‘What Is This’, came along pretty quickly.

Then, after dumping all my best tunes on Pickett, I cut the covers ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, ‘California Dreamin” and ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco’, the first two hitting big again in 1968. Then came the R&B hits ‘It’s Gonna Rain’, ‘How I Miss You Baby’ and ‘More Than I Can Stand’ over the next couple of years.

Around this time, we had a little trouble out on the road, in Savannah, Georgia. I had put a band together and was constantly out touring, drumming up audiences to make those hits. We’d had a little problem with the equipment at one club – it wasn’t there. There was some talk of cancelling, but a guy in the audience had other ideas. He had come into the club with a pistol and started shooting. Winged someone and they were lying in the aisle, bleeding. He then jammed a piece of metal in the door so no one could get out and started firing up into the ceiling, putting a couple of slugs in an old chandelier. Man, I was scared to death.

The crowd went quiet. You could have heard a pin drop. My guitarist ran off stage and locked himself in the john. I must have looked like a joke up there on stage – so I didn’t stay. I ran right after my guitar player and knocked on that bathroom door, trying to get in, and waited for the law to arrive.

I liked to hang out, play some tunes. Musicians knew that and I’d get a call – see if I wanted to jam, rustle up some licks.

One day in 1970, I got a phone call. By the end of the same long day, the caller’s life was ended, but the world had gained a beautiful song. Her name was Janis Joplin and the tune was ‘Mercedes Benz’.

Janis called and told me she was recording her new album, Pearl. She had a request. ‘Everybody tells me they have recorded at least one of your songs. I just want to say I’ve recorded one. Can you bring me a song?’

At first, I thought the phone call was a wind-up. I didn’t know Janis, had never met her, and I wasn’t heavily into her music. So I said, ‘Janis Joplin, sure. And I’m John Kennedy.’

She had trouble convincing me after that. She got the album’s producer, Paul Rothchild, to pick up the phone. Paul told me it really was Janis and she wanted a song from me. He made his pitch: ‘She cannot do this album unless you give her a song.’

I was persuaded and I told them I’d be right down.

Janis was a prankster and when I rolled up she was sitting there with a straw hat and fiddling with a little bell.

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