![]() Womack again re-emerged in the mid-1980s with a couple of classic R&B albums The Poet (1981) and The Poet II (1984). Womack began his solo career in 1968, and had a run of strong albums in the early 1970s with Communication (1971), Understanding (1972) and Looking For a Love, the title track of which-a cover of an old Valentino’s hit–was the closet thing Womack ever had to a pop hit. Add to the mix, his struggles with drug addition, and his recent bout with a benign tumor in his colon and pneumonia, and Bobby Womack’s life seems like a reality show in the making. Womack’s only son with Campbell, committed suicide in the mid-1980s, an infant son he had with his second wife died a crib death, and a third son is incarcerated for second-degree murder. The relationship ended when Campbell shot Womack. Womack and Campbell shared a tumultuous relationship for five years, including an affair with Campbell’s daughter Linda (his step-daughter), that Womack documents in his memoir Midnight Mover: The True Story of the Greatest Soul Singer in the World. Womack publicly hints at the relationship on his 1985 track “I Wish He Didn’t Trust Me So Much,” which is about a man who falls in love with his best friend’s wife. The couple only waited that long, because Womack was still too young to get married without a parent’s permission. The group caught the attention of Soul legend Sam Cooke, who managed and mentored the group, and encouraged Womack to allow The Rolling Stones to record his song, “It’s All Over Now,” which became the group’s first number one record in the UK.Ĭooke and Womack developed a particularly close friendship, which is perhaps why Womack, thought it was logical to marry Cooke’s widow, Barbara Campbell, only months after the singer’s murder in December of 1964. Bobby Womack’s story is less well- known, thus it is fitting that Robinson’s quote is heard on Womack’s new recording The Bravest Man in the Universe-his first studio recording in twelve years.įor the uninitiated, Bobby Womack was born in Cleveland, OH in 1944, and first came to prominence as a teen recording with his brothers as The Valentino’s. Green’s psychic and spiritual conversion over a pot of grits (and a suicide) and Isley’s recent tax conviction are well known to the public. The above quote from William “Smokey” Robinson, a fifty-plus year veteran of the music industry, could have been directed at any number of his still living contemporaries, such as Al Green or Ronald Isley. Listen to yesterday's Song of the Day, and subscribe to the Song of the Day newsletter.“As a singer grows older, his conception goes a little bit deeper, because he lives life and he understands what he is trying to say a little more”-Smokey Robinson It sounds like a hopeless cause, but he did make it there: A year later, he recorded a bopping "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." ![]() And at the coda, he doesn't fade out, instead opting to invent a whole new song - picking up the pace, crying out "California Dreamin'," rising to a falsetto. ![]() A highlight of the just-released retrospective CD Bobby Womack: The Soul Years, Womack's cover opens with familiar strummed guitar chords and those famously bleak first lines - "All the leaves are brown / and the sky is gray" - but the Cleveland native's rough-hewn voice adds a load of psychic pain absent from The Mamas and the Papas' jaunty original.īacked by his own elegantly mournful guitar, the steady tap of a drummer, and insistent horns, Womack flavors the song with gospel shouts and ad-libs ("Somebody help me, I wanna go so badly"). Bobby Womack (seen here in 1987) calls himself the "last soul man," and his cover of "California Dreamin'" demonstrates that it's no exaggeration.īobby Womack calls himself the "last soul man," and his 1968 version of The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'" demonstrates that it's no exaggeration.
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