Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon (16 page)

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Authors: Pamela Des Barres

BOOK: Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon
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Mary Austin said that despite the agony he was going through, Freddie Mercury had no regrets.
A few weeks earlier Freddie had made the decision to rerelease “Bohemian Rhapsody” and donate the proceeds to AIDS charities. Just six days after the song came out, it went to number one, ultimately making more than $1.5 million for AIDS. Mary Austin revealed that Freddie had secretly given away millions to AIDS charities in the months before his death. But that wasn’t enough for a lot of people.
Many in the rock world accused Freddie of cowardice by making the decision to keep his affliction a secret. They felt that by not admitting the truth, the flamboyant singer made gayness and AIDS something to be ashamed of. When his will was published in May 1992 and there were no bequests to AIDS charities, the controversy continued. When Mary Austin received the bulk of Freddie’s fortune, she vowed to donate part of the money for AIDS research.
“I think the fact that he was so beloved,” David Bowie said of Freddie, “straight or gay, will focus some people on the fact that AIDS knows no boundaries:” Bowie also said he always admired a man who wears tights.
Six months after their singer succumbed to AIDS, the remaining members of Queen gathered a phalanx of stars to pay tribute to Freddie Mercury and raise money for AIDS research. Guns N’ Roses, David Bowie, George Michael, and Freddie’s close friend Elton John sang Queen songs to the gigantic teary-eyed crowd who wore red AIDS ribbons to show their support. Despite claims that seven and a half million dollars would be raised for AIDS charities, it was finally revealed that, due to the costs of staging the massive show and providing hotels and limos for the stars and their entourages, the concert made only a modest profit.
There is still no memorial for Freddie Mercury. His ashes haven’t been scattered because officials in Freddie’s borough of Kensington haven’t decided whether he will be allowed a memorial. Said council leader John Hanham, “We do not want a problem like the Paris authorities have with Jim Morrison’s grave. And it can’t be like Elvis Presley’s shrine in America. You have to admit that Memphis is rather different from Kensington High Street.”
SAM COOKE
The divine Sam Cooke in his prime. (MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/ VENICE, CALIF.)
M
y favorite living singer is Terence Trent D’Arby. My favorite singer of all time is Sam Cooke. He is also Terence’s favorite singer. A lot of people feel that way about Sam. Rod Stewart claims Sam inspired him so deeply that he spent two years listening
only
to his music. “Sam Cooke is somebody other singers have to measure themselves against,” said Keith Richards, “and most of them go back to pumping gas.” Legendary record producer Jerry Wexler called Sam “the best singer who ever lived. No contest. I mean
nobody
can touch Sam Cooke … . Everything about him was perfection. A perfect case.”
Sam Cooke was among the first ten inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Elvis, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. Four years before his fatal plane crash, Otis Redding told a reporter that he wanted “to fill the silent void caused by Sam Cooke’s death.”
Last year ABKCO released the music from Sam’s own SAR label—a collection
of gospel, pop, and soul that includes Sam’s former gospel group the Soul Stirrers, Johnnie Taylor, and the Womack Brothers, along with a few previously unreleased tracks by Sam himself. “Somewhere There’s a Girl” is the most inspirational, magnificent, soul-expanding vocal performance I have ever heard in my entire life. The song puts me into a state of prayer and gratitude, reminding me just how transcendent a human voice can be—and how far it can take you. Over thirty years ago Sam Cooke was shot down under very seedy, shadowy circumstances, his glorious voice silenced by a bullet to the heart. How did the well-mannered preacher’s son, the Jesus-shouting soul stirrer, wind up in a sleazy three-dollar motel room on the dark side of town, with a shady lady of the night?
In his smooth and graceful way, Sam Cooke broke down musical and racial barriers all during his career. From the age of eighteen he was the premier gospel singer before crossing over to pop. His very first record, “You Send Me,” went straight to number one. He was a brilliant songwriter, producer, and arranger, and the first black singer to walk out onstage and refuse to perform unless the concert was integrated.
Son of devout Holiness Baptist minister Reverend Charley Cook, Sam grew up with the church as the central focus in his life. Reverend Cook’s service in Bronzeville, Illinois, was the singing, stomping, clapping, shouting kind—praising the Savior with joyous music. Sam’s mother, Annie May, sang in the choir, and by the time he could stand up, little Sam was singing for Jesus. As a very young boy, he performed with his four siblings, Hattie, Mary, Charles, and L.C., as the Singing Children, actually making a bit of money to bring home to their folks. Sometimes Sam would even sneak into the local tavern and croon along with Billie Holiday on the jukebox, grabbing a few coins on his own, always offering his take to his mother. Charley Cook took pride in the fact that his wife didn’t have to work, and Annie May was a doting mama, instilling in Sam a disarming self-confidence at a tender age. At eleven, in 1942, Sam was dunked in a large tub of water at his father’s Christ Temple Church and baptized in the Lord. Soon afterward Reverend Cook became a sort of wandering preacher, traveling to various towns with his message, taking along the Singing Children to praise Jesus in song. At a gathering in Chicago one evening, as the Children waited to sing, they were treated to a rousing performance by the top gospel group, the Soul Stirrers, and watched in silent awe.
Sam’s younger brother, L.C., says that Sam knew from a very early age that he was never going to work nine to five. “I said, ‘What are you gonna do then, if you ain’t gonna work, Sam?’ He said, ‘I’m gonna sing.’ And he had some Popsicle sticks—you know, them wooden sticks? He had about twenty of them and he lined them sticks up, stuck ‘em in the ground, and he said, ‘This is my audience, see? I’m gonna sing to these sticks.’ He said, ‘This prepare me for my future.’ I say, ‘Man, you got to be crazy,’ and he sat there and sang to
them sticks. You talking about he was nine and I was seven, and he talking about he never gonna work. And he never did.”
Sam glided through high school with barely a ripple. Most of his fellow students at Wendell Philips High don’t even remember his junior year “First Noel” solo at the Christmas program. His real life was going on outside of school. Sam had formed a gospel group, the Teenage Highway QCs, named after the local Highway Baptist Church (nobody seems to recall what “QC” stood for). With a lot of rehearsal and determination, the a cappella group became part of the quartet circuit, traveling around to perform at different churches. Sam’s older brother, Charles, went to see the QCs when he got out of the service and was stunned by the fire in Sam’s singing. “He had me in tears, almost.”
Sam was about to graduate and was serious about not working nine to five. The QCs hired a “trainer,” the Soul Stirrers’ R. B. Robinson, to work with them on harmony and tempo, training the ambitious Sam on lead vocals.
A clean-cut Christian image was obviously paramount in his chosen field, but even as Sam charmed his way through the church doors, there were already signs of the ladies’ man he was to become. Although he was involved with his childhood sweetheart, Barbara Campbell, Sam got in big trouble with a girl named Georgia when her little sister found some pornography after one of Sam’s nighttime visits. Georgia’s parents called the police on the preacher’s son and he spent ninety days in jail on a morals charge. There must have been some serious shame in the family, but Sam was forgiven his transgression, and now when he sang about the devil’s temptation, it rang a little more true. The talk was that this sweet-voiced kid, Sam Cook, was not to be missed, and the next time the QCs played, they got a manager.
Louis Tate saw the group in Detroit and took the clean-cut teenagers on. It was the beginning of a two-year road trip round and round the country. Tate says the boys were very religious—no drinking, no cursing—but that the charismatic Sam couldn’t stay away from the women—and they couldn’t stay away from him.
It may not have been nine to five, but the QCs were working hard for very little pay, sleeping on a lot of Christian couches along the way. Sam was even more determined and had started writing his own songs, but Tate was going broke and had to get back to his family. It was about this time that the Soul Stirrers lost their lead singer, R. H. Harris, and eighteen-year-old Sam Cook grabbed the much-coveted spot. Now he had to go out and show the Lord he was a Soul Stirrer.
With only one rehearsal, Sam’s first performance with his new group took place at his old high school, and he was wringing his hands. After only one line of lyrics, a young girl stood up and shouted, “That’s my baby! Sing, baby!” and the house came down for the first of many, many times.
Sam was wearing fancy suits in the gospel big leagues but still had to prove he could take the place of the much-beloved Harris. With his perfect pitch
and willingness to learn from the Stirrers’ manager, S. R. Crain, in no time at all he did just that. After just a month on the road, the group went to Los Angeles, where Sam would cut his first record. On March 1, 1951, the Stirrers arrived at the studio, where Art Rupe, head of Specialty Records, was surprised to find that Harris had been replaced with a teenager. But as soon as Sam started singing “Jesus Gave Me Water” with that sheer, infectious joy of his, Crain says Sam “awed Art Rupe.” One of Sam’s own songs, “Until Jesus Calls Me Home,” was recorded that day, and the Stirrers were thrilled to have a writer in their midst. “We should sing,” Sam cries, “’til Jesus calls.”
“Jesus Gave Me Water” was the biggest hit the Stirrers had ever had and made Sam a star in the gospel world. Especially with “Sister Flute.” There was one in every congregation—the lady so caught up in the Holy Spirit that she would scream and shout “Amen” until the whole place followed suit, moaning in rapture. The rest of the Stirrers, who were in their forties, were surprised to see girls in their teens, who usually hung back, crowding down front, shouting for Sam Cook. It worried some of the older folks, who believed gospel might get caught up in the blues, but young people heard the sweet hope in Sam’s voice and women thought he was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave) recalls that when the Stirrers came to his hometown of Miami, the Christian girls swooned. “I’ve seen women just pass out wanting to get him!”
Unbeknownst to “Sister Flute,” in 1952 Barbara Campbell had Sam’s daughter, Linda, and though Sam stayed in touch and sent money, he wasn’t ready to get married. He was having a high old time on the road. In fact, while he was in Cleveland, Sam found out he was going to have another child with a lady named Maxine.
Early in 1953 the Stirrers pitched one of their songs too high for Sam, and when he couldn’t reach the note, he cruised under it, bending the note into something magical. The next time he did it again, adding syllables, wo-wo-wo-ing until the girls were on their knees. Sam was able to infuse people with the Holy Spirit. “It’s a fire,” said Crain about Sam’s ability to shake someone’s soul. “A fire that burns.” One soul reaching out and touching another.
By the third Soul Stirrers album, Sam was bending notes all over the place—and he had fallen in love. It was in Fresno, California, that singer Dolores Mohawk got a load of Sam shaking the spirit out of a whole room full of people, and she wanted a closer look. A much closer look. At the end of the tour, Sam spent two weeks with Dolores, and in October they got married, settling back in Bronzeville with her five-year-old son, Joey. Barbara Campbell was not amused. She had always assumed that someday Sam would be hers. Beautiful Dolores may have landed Sam, but due to his ten months a year on the road, she rarely saw her husband.
Because the Stirrers’ label, Specialty Records, was having a lot of success in the burgeoning pop market, Art Rupe hired Robert “Bumps” Blackwell as an
A&R trainee, inviting him to a gospel show at the Shrine Auditorium. After watching the hysterical response to Sam Cook, Bumps immediately thought the soulful singer could cross over into pop music. Sam balked at the idea, fearing he would lose his religious audience, and continued with the Stirrers on tour for another year. He had written three of the group’s most recent singles—including the biggest-selling “Touch the Hem of His Garment,” while riding in the backseat, after opening to a page in the Bible that told about a sick woman who is healed by touching Jesus’s hem. Sam had the storyteller’s uncanny ability to pull people into a miracle.
By deciding to enter the pop-music field, Sam was taking a hard-core chance with his career, but that’s where the big money could be made. “Making a living was good enough,” he said about the musical shift, “but what’s wrong with doing better than that?” Still, he recorded his first pop single, “Lovable,” in New Orleans under the assumed name “Dale Cook.” It wasn’t a hit, and the fiction fooled nobody in the gospel world. Sam would have to make a choice.
Dolores Cook was bored and lonely most of the time, and after her desperate suicide attempt, Sam tried to make the marriage work, but his heart wasn’t in it. Said Crain, “I think he was just tired of being married. Usually when he was with a woman awhile, he didn’t want her no more. Just seems that’s the way he acted. Not only her, every woman he had.” Sam and Dolores would soon divorce.
Sam recorded one last album with the Soul Stirrers and the song he contributed signaled the change to come. Although “That’s Heaven to Me” is still very much a religious song, it states that you can find your God right here on earth.
On June 1, 1957, Sam cut brother L.C.’s song “You Send Me,” a sweet tale of young love laced with his breezy wo-wo-wo’s, and when the single came out on the new Keen label a few months later, it was an instant Top Ten smash. Sam was soon selling more records in a day than the Soul Stirrers sold in a year. “You Send Me” eventually reached number one and stayed on the charts for six months, eventually spawning eight covers. (Teresa Brewer’s squeaky-clean, oh-so-white imitation of Sam’s wo-wo’s was pretty damn funny.)
All of a sudden everybody wanted Sam Cooke (he added the “e” to his name for his new start). He signed with the prestigious William Morris Agency and got a slot on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” But when Sam was cut off in mid-song due to an overlong show, African Americans bombarded the station with complaints and he was rebooked. By that time, December 1958, Sam had a new record, “For Sentimental Reasons,” and the national exposure sent him over the top. It was about this time that Sam found out he had fathered another baby, in Washington, D.C. Then, in May 1959, he was arrested on paternity charges in Philadelphia. (He settled out of court for ten thousand dollars.) The man got around!

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