Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke (32 page)

It had happened like this at least once before. Bumps was on a plane to New Orleans to record Little Richard in May of 1956 with all of Art’s carefully written-out plans and instructions. One of the principal songs they were going to cut was a new number called “Rip It Up,” for which Art had worked out a carefully articulated approach, but then Bumps fell asleep on the plane, “and when I woke up, I had a different concept of the song. I fell asleep, dreamed it, woke up, sketched it [out], and when I got into New Orleans I really did it. When I came back, I just knew I had a smash, [but] Art was very unhappy because the piano triplets was gone, I had the hi-hat and a whole different concept behind the song, and he was going to fire me—but I bet him it would be a hit, just put it out. So he did, and I won the bet, and I won a suit from [Hollywood clothier] Sy Devore. The first time in my life I had a suit that cost that much.”

In this instance Bumps had had a similar vision: to set Sam’s gospel-trained voice against the unmistakably white sound of the Lee Gotch Singers, L.A.’s number-one pop session group—they would be, as he and René saw it, “the classical frosting on the cake,” the “refinement” that would make Sam acceptable not just to his old fans (who Bumps was convinced would never desert him) but to the new white audience that he knew was out there just as much for a romantic talent like Sam’s as for an outlandish one like Little Richard’s. Bumps was so convinced of the correctness of his concept that he never gave any thought to the consequences of countermanding the plan that Art had devised and to which he had so blithely agreed—and he might even have succeeded if, as in the case of the Little Richard session, it had simply been a matter of bringing back a tape from New Orleans and presenting Art with a fait accompli.

What he hadn’t counted on was the effect of Art’s actual presence in the studio, or the ferocity of Art’s indignation. Art was beside himself. He saw what Bumps had done as a direct betrayal, as the kind of disloyalty that went well beyond simple deviation from a plan. And he let him know it, in front of the musicians, the backup singers, the engineer, and the artist himself; in fact, he treated them all with such disrespect that Sam, Bumps recognized with a sudden sense of powerlessness, “just wanted to quit. He was very hurt and very insulted and felt that it was completely unnecessary. Which it was.”

But most of all Bumps saw himself being belittled in front of the musicians that he worked with every day and in front of the young man whom he was grooming for stardom and whom he saw as his ticket out of the “nigger heaven”—you can get so far, but no further—that he perceived his present position in life to be. It was a humiliation that he was not prepared to suffer—and yet one for which he had no retort, as they finished the session without the backup singers (after all, Art reasoned, the time had been paid for, and there were still two songs left to do), with all parties silently seething and Art still pushing for a more punched-up r&b approach. At the conclusion of the session harsh words were once again exchanged, and, as Art recalled, “I instructed Bumps and Sam to come to the office for a meeting the following Monday.”

Not surprisingly, “the ill feeling that was created by me criticizing the session carried over into [our] talks,” and it quickly became apparent to Art that this was simply not going to work. Words had been spoken on both sides that could not be unsaid. But worst of all, he was beginning to see a kind of conspiracy between Bumps and Sam that he had long suspected and certainly could not tolerate. “I began to feel that Bumps was functioning [more] as Sam’s manager” than as Specialty’s employee.

He began to see a Sam Cook, too, that he didn’t know that he wanted to be associated with, no longer the watchful, waiting, somewhat calculating young man whom he might often have wondered about but had no grounds for dismissing, but someone who, unlike Bumps, was now willing to challenge his employer’s authority. At their meeting Sam came right out and demanded a larger royalty, “even though we had [just] negotiated a new contract for his recording services,” and he refused to back down on the matter of the white backup singers, an argument, Art felt, that could go nowhere. Most of all, he showed an insolent, arrogant manner, “an egotistical, self-serving” side and an almost naked, covetous desire “for bread pure and simple” that Art found insupportable.

Sam for his part could scarcely believe the manner in which he and Bumps were being treated. He grew angrier and angrier at the way this humorless white man brushed aside all their objections, ignored their suggestions, treated them as if they were
children.
It was true he had signed a new contract just three days before, but he had signed it knowing that contract was bullshit, knowing that 1 percent was not 3 percent, and knowing from Lloyd Price, who had bought his way out of his Specialty contract the previous November, that Art was going to try to play on his ignorance and fuck him any way he could. They all talked about it among themselves. “Art just assumed he was superior in every way,” said Sonny Knight, Bumps’ first signing to the label, who was so fed up with what he considered to be the prevailing “plantation mentality” that he had put his sister’s name on his own compositions ever since leaving Specialty rather than honor his onerous songwriter’s contract. According to Sonny, Art had offered him yard work while he was waiting around for his first session, and he had responded, “You must be out of your fucking mind. I signed a contract to cut records, not cut your fucking lawn.” Which definitely shortened his stay on the label.

Sam had heard all the stories. Little Richard wasn’t making jackshit, he knew from Bumps, with an artist’s royalty of half a penny a record. But Art had never done him that way. So he had signed the contract, figuring that the philosophy he had first learned from his father, then from Alex and Crain—go along to get along, just yes them to death—would continue to serve him in good stead. Act nice, be pleasant, always be sure and give Mr. Rupe a nice smile—and then let Bumps and his own success make everything right. Bumps had boasted that he could take care of Art, Bumps had said he would take care of him, that Sam didn’t have to say anything, Bumps would do all the talking—and here the white man was just knocking Bumps and everyone else all around. He and J.W. and the others all knew that Art pictured himself as a friend of the colored man, but he wasn’t being no friend to anybody here, not even himself.

Art was no less furious. “I just felt, I’m not going to fool with these people.” At first he thought maybe if he cut Bumps loose he could bring Sam back into the fold, and the next day, he wrote out a memo to himself proposing the terms for a resolution: he would give Bumps back four of his own unreleased instrumental masters along with $1,500, and Bumps would in turn release Specialty from all future financial obligations, including bonuses and royalties already owed. On Wednesday, June 5, he presented the memorandum to Bumps, formally typed up as a simple one-paragraph release, with one additional condition: “that the songwriter’s contracts between the undersigned and VENICE MUSIC, INC. . . . shall remain in full force and effect between the parties.”

Bumps rejected it out of hand, even after Art put it in terms he thought Bumps would find difficult to resist. They obviously couldn’t continue to work together under these circumstances, Art said. Then he told Bumps, “I know I owe you money, but if you let me be your lawyer—[that is] if you need a lawyer, it’s going to cost you a third to fifty percent [contingency fee]. So for twenty-five percent I’ll be your lawyer.” Which Bumps understood to mean “he’d give me seventy-five cents on every dollar that he owed me.”

Bumps didn’t see it that way. Fifteen hundred dollars wasn’t one-tenth of what he had coming. “I knew I had ten thousand dollars in bonuses coming—we had a deal: every record that I produced that sold over a hundred thousand, I got a thousand dollars, and I had ten records on the charts.” Plus he had a 1 1/4 percent royalty against his $550-a-month draw. The way he figured it, Art might owe him closer to $20,000 than $1,500. And who knew what was going to happen with Sam’s record?

They went back and forth on the subject for several days, and finally Art came up with a new formulation. “I said, ‘Bumps, how much of a gambler are you?’ Then I told him that since he was so certain that Sam was going to hit, and that the records were so good, that I’d assign him Sam’s recording contract and the four recordings that Sam just made”—in addition to Bumps’ four instrumentals—in exchange for a full release from all future financial obligations. From Art’s point of view, it was a deal on which he couldn’t lose. Sam and Bumps would remain tied to Specialty as songwriters, he would be rid of two troublesome and intransigent characters, and no money would change hands. Even if Bumps managed to place the masters with another record company, “I figured, well, this stuff’ll sell maybe a hundred, a hundred fifty thousand,” and he was even able to cover himself with an “insurance” clause that obligated Sam to “perform and make eight sides at the option of SPECIALTY RECORDS, INC., during the term of the contract” and specified that Bumps would have “no right, title, or interest in and to said eight sides which will be made by SAM COOK for SPECIALTY.”

He was right in his judgment of Bumps’ gambler’s instinct. Bumps believed in Sam, he just
knew
he was going to be a star, he had been telling that to everyone who would listen for the last two years—and besides, he was tired of Art’s feudal system. On June 14 he signed the release—but he never told his wife that they wouldn’t be getting the money from the bonus arrangement with Specialty, he figured that would just have to take care of itself.

B
UMPS WASN’T
idle during the thirteen-day interval between the session and his and Sam’s formal split with Art. Even before the terms of the separation were fully worked out, he put out word throughout the Los Angeles r&b community that he was looking for a deal. Central Record Sales, the principal independent one-stop distributor in the area, suggested that he put out the record on his own and distribute it through them, and Dick “Huggy Boy” Hugg, the fast-talking white r&b jock who had started broadcasting from the window of Dolphin’s of Hollywood in 1953 while still in his teens, would have been more than happy to see the release come out on his brand-new Caddy label. But it soon became evident to everyone that Bumps wanted more than just some little record release. He wanted power and prestige and a title to go with it.

René told him about a businessman named John Siamas, who was thinking of starting up a label with Artie Shaw-style white clarinetist Bob Keane in charge. But he didn’t really know how to get in touch with Siamas, or Keane, until he ran into a fellow named Art Foxall, a saxophonist he had worked with when he first arrived in L.A., and then Foxall happened to encounter Keane, whom he knew from jamming around in various downtown clubs, outside the union hall.

“I think I ran into him on the corner,” recalled Keane, thirty-five years old at the time and something of a small-time entrepreneur, who had first signed with the MCA talent agency in 1939 as “The World’s Youngest Band Leader.” “Foxall was a pretty sharp guy, he knew what was going on, and he asked me if I was going to have an r&b division. I said, ‘Yeah, what else is there?’ ’Cause I had never been in the record business before. I didn’t know what was going to sell. I didn’t even know how to make a record, for Christ’s sake. So he gave me a little story about Sam: [how] he got kicked off the label. He told me about Sam’s manager, too, and he put me in touch with Bumps, and the next thing I know, Bumps and J.W. Alexander are sitting up in my little home at the top of the hill on Dillon Street. I remember saying to my wife, Elsa, ‘I love that “Summertime”’—we were sitting on the couch, and we made some kind of handshake deal.”

The deal, which was going to have to be run by John Siamas, the Greek airplane parts manufacturer who was funding the as-yet-unnamed label, basically put Bumps in charge not just of the r&b line but of a division dedicated exclusively to gospel music as well, which Bumps enthusiastically predicted was going to be the next big trend. Alexander’s world-famous Pilgrim Travelers would be the first signees, and the other Specialty gospel acts would soon follow, he and J.W. confidently asserted, given both Art Rupe’s current state of mind and what Bob Keane indicated was the new label’s ability to pay. There was some talk of ownership potential, there was some talk of Bumps’ previous bonus and royalty arrangement with Specialty, but clearly the next step would be for Bumps to meet with John Siamas.

This he did almost immediately in Siamas’ Windsor Hills home overlooking the Crenshaw district. Siamas, a big, square-jawed forty-two-year-old first-generation Greek-American with an engineering degree from Northwestern, where he also played football, had worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, during the war, married, had a son, and then suffered the sudden loss of his wife to an aneurysm nine months after their child was born. With his second wife and son, John Jr., he joined his brother Alex in Southern California, where most of his immediate family, including his mother and uncles Andrew and Paul, had moved. He and Alex started their own company, Randall Engineering Corporation, on Higuera Boulevard in Culver City in 1952, which supplied aircraft parts primarily to Boeing and had developed several patented designs, including a widely used thrust reverser. A jazz buff and an audiophile, Siamas had met Bob Keane through his chief engineer, Rex Oberbeck, and they soon became fast friends, with Siamas not only attending Keane’s club performances but even offering him a salesman’s job with his company. He also invited Keane and his girlfriend, Elsa, who was a singer, out to the Friday-evening dance sessions he held in the spacious living room of his home, where he spun records by everyone from Louis Prima to Bill Doggett and had a professional dance instructor demonstrate how to do all the latest steps. When Keane and Elsa decided to get married that spring, John Siamas stood up as Bob’s best man. Not long afterward, John Siamas announced to his family that he was going to be in the record business.