Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke (44 page)

As for Sam, he felt no compunction whatsoever about his role in the affair. As far as he was concerned, Art had long since made his money, what was he complaining about? He and L.C. and J.W. only chortled when L.C. was called upon to claim authorship and, under close examination by Art’s lawyer, Dave Pollock, L.C. not only affirmed the compositions to be his own but recited the lyrics verse by verse, note by note. Art’s lawyer at this point drew Art aside and, speaking in an urgent undertone according to L.C.’s recollection, declared, “The wise father knows his own children. I would stake my reputation that he wrote these songs.”

“You know,” said J.W. Alexander to L.C. afterward, “I was almost believing that you actually wrote them!”

D
ESPITE KEEN’s GROWTH
, and Sam’s success, things had not been going particularly well for Bumps at the label. He still did not have a written contract spelling out either his partnership agreement or his profit participation, and his relationship with John Siamas grew increasingly testy that summer. At the beginning of July, he had asked for a clarification of his status and, a month later, demanded an accounting, since he had as yet received no royalties. In response, as he understood it, he was promised formal recognition of his ownership share in the company, but, he was given to understand, this would be in lieu of unpaid royalties, so there was still no hope of money actually changing hands.

Sam, too, was upset with him, Bumps had little doubt it was at Alex’s instigation. Bumps had reassured Sam again and again that here at Keen, unlike Specialty, they were going to own their own publishing, that Siamas had promised them at least an equal share in their own songs with Higuera, Keen’s publishing arm. But so far not a word had come from the company itself, and Sam kept pressing him for proof. Bumps knew that Alexander was always playing devil’s advocate, telling Sam Bumps didn’t know what he was talking about, that you needed more than pretty promises to be in business, and Bumps put down Sam’s growing impatience to Alexander’s interference. One time Sam said to him, “You taking care of all these other people’s business instead of taking care of mine—and I’m your bread and butter.” Which shocked Bumps in a way, but he thought it was just a little too much ego and would most likely pass.

Then his “assistant,” Fred Smith, left over what Bumps might have termed a little “misunderstanding” but to Fred was more a matter of his life’s blood: his songs. It all came back to “Western Movies,” the novelty number that Fred and Cliff Goldsmith had written for Sam and that Bumps kept stringing them along about. Nothing happened and nothing happened, and finally Fred’s mother, Effie Smith, a blues singer who with her husband, John Criner, had various music business enterprises of her own, was taking this group called the Challengers into the studio for the first time, “and she let me hear the stuff [that they were gonna cut], and I said, ‘Man, me and Cliff got a song that would make them number one.’ So I told Cliff, I said, ‘Man, I’m just tired of Bumps. Let’s go do it.’” The group changed its name to the Olympics, the song was a hit right out of the chute, and when he got wind of what Fred and Cliff had done, Bumps fired Fred and recorded the song on his wife, Marlene, who no one had even known was a singer up till then.

It was as if Bumps’ magic was deserting him. René Hall’s description of Bumps in the studio could just as easily have summed up the man: “He would just talk loud and boss everybody around and create the impression that he knew what he was doing. Then he would hire capable people that would straighten it out and do it their way, and he’d say, ‘Yes, that’s what I want.’” Only now it seemed some of those very problem solvers were instead creating problems of their own.

J.W. had no doubt that “Bumps should have protected Sam better.” J.W. was staying temporarily with his lead singer Lou Rawls’ mother, Evie, and her husband, Marion Wooten Beal, whom everyone called “Keg” because he had always wanted to be a bartender and, in the absence of achieving his professional ambitions, had set up a bar in his own home. J.W.’s latest marriage had recently broken up mostly because his wife, Shelley, had started working as a manicurist at La Couture and fallen in with a sporting crowd, but also because she disapproved of what she termed his unhealthy professional preoccupation with Sam Cooke. “She thought the only reason I was interested in working with him was because we was friends in the gospel.” She accused him of neglecting his own career for a pipe dream, and she dismissed out of hand any claims he might make for Sam Cooke’s extraordinary talent, appeal, and artistic potential.

On July 1, 1958, J.W. registered his new publishing company with BMI. It was called Kags after Lou’s stepfather, Keg (his second choice, if “Kags” had already been taken, was Evie for Lou’s mother), and he had just two songs in it. But he had long since come to recognize the value of publishing. Label and record store owner John Dolphin had told him, “You know, they making thousands of dollars off you. You should have a publishing company of your own.” And now he did, and one day that summer, as they were leaving the Keen studio, he told Sam about it. Sam said that was all well and good, but what did it have to do with him? Keen was going to give him publishing on his own songs. “I said, ‘Don’t you believe that. They won’t give you no publishing. You ought to have a company yourself.’ I said, ‘I ain’t got nothing going, but [at least] I got a company.’”

Sam didn’t say anything more for a while, but he seemed to give the matter some thought, and then he told Alex to learn all he could on the subject. And while he was at it, Sam said, maybe Alex could supply him with a good ballad from that publishing company of his. So J.W. did. “I wrote a song called ‘Little Things You Do,’ and I told Sam, ‘[If you’re going to record it], sing it just because of the song, not because of our friendship.’” When Sam said that that was exactly why he was going to record it, because he loved the song, J.W. immediately released the news to the press, including the fact that it came from J.W. Alexander’s own newly formed publishing company and that “orchestras and arrangers can get the sheet music through . . . Kags.”

Sam sought J.W.’s advice about Barbara, too. Bumps had been warning Sam that bringing her out to California could constitute a violation of the Mann Act, but J.W. told him that was nonsense, Barbara wasn’t under age and, anyway, white slavery didn’t apply. On the matter of Jess Rand he was more ambivalent. He didn’t like Jess, and he could tell the cocky little PR man didn’t much care for him, treating him with condescension and dismissing his views as if they were by definition naive and without merit. And yet he knew that Jess had something to add, that Jess provided an unmistakable veneer of respectability by putting a white face on Sam’s business—and that he was going to undercut Bumps’ standing with Sam, too. So Alex encouraged Sam to continue to solicit Jess’ professional counsel while never doubting for a moment that Sam would keep coming to him, J.W., on both personal and professional matters.

The Cavalcade of Jazz took place on August 3 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, the scene of Sam’s first meeting with Bumps as well as Bumps’ formal introduction to gospel music just three short years ago. Past stars of the show included Nat “King” Cole, Billy Eckstine, Louis Jordan, Count Basie, and Little Richard, and Sam’s fellow headliners at the Shrine were Little Willie John, Ray Charles, and bandleader Ernie Freeman, with whom he had gone out in February. Four of the city’s most prominent r&b jocks—Charles Trammel, Huggy Boy, Jim Randolph, and Hunter Hancock—served as an integrated team of MCs, and Sammy Davis Jr. was drafted to present the crown for the Miss Cavalcade of Jazz beauty contest, whose judges included DooTone label owner Dootsie Williams and
Los Angeles Sentinel
gossip columnist Gertrude Gipson.

Jess Rand was there and saw to it that his two clients had their picture taken together. Sam had a genuine admiration for Sammy, most of all for his sophistication, his savoir faire, and his taste in clothes, and Jess was quick to let him know where Sammy got his tuxedos custom-made in New York. Sam had been flattered, too, when Jess told him that he was one of the few stars that Sammy didn’t even try to imitate—because, Sammy said, Sam’s style was inimitable. They got along all right, as far as Jess could tell, especially given that they were from such entirely different worlds, but he couldn’t fail to notice that Sam was no more above flirting with Sammy’s girl than Sammy was above pulling social rank on Sam. To Jess, Sammy was the more complete entertainer by far, not to mention the more “legitimate” act. He was well aware, though, by virtue of both Sammy’s ironclad commitment to, and managerial contract with, his “uncle” Will Mastin (Sammy was still billed with his father as part of the same Will Mastin Trio he had joined at the age of three, even though he had long since established himself as a solo act) that he would never officially be Sammy’s manager, as frequently as he might have fulfilled that role. At the same time, he
knew
there were places he could take Sam, both through his connections and through Sam’s undeniable talent, and he was confident that with a well-versed musical ally like Clif White, who shared Jess’ love of Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, and the classical school of pop songwriting, he could educate Sam and introduce him to whole new worlds, worlds that Bumps could never even imagine.

All of the headliners were advertised with their own bands. Ray Charles had the same incomparable septet with whom he had just played a mix of his own hits, jazz originals, and standards at the Newport Jazz Festival in July, while Little Willie John, whose “Talk to Me, Talk to Me,” was still on the pop charts after four months, was backed by a very different kind of group, Little Richard’s old backing band, the Upsetters. The Upsetters, with whom Sam had shared a bill just after Richard’s retirement the previous fall, were about as hard-rocking as anybody out there, and they put on a show. In combination with the delicate sinuousness of Willie’s voice, they couldn’t be beat. But Sam felt like the eight-piece band he had put together for his upcoming tour was a step in the right direction, especially after some of the mismatched units he and Clif had had to suffer with in the past. Bumps had insisted once again on putting his name on the package (it was, nominally, the Bumps Blackwell Orchestra), but Sam had hired Johnny Otis’ old drummer, Leard “Kansas City” Bell, as his personal bandleader, and Bell had in turn hired twenty-six-year-old Bob Tate, an experienced sax man originally from Phoenix, as musical director and arranger. With your own band, there was no question you could present your music the way
you
heard it—look at Ray, look at Willie—and with Clif as musical liaison, he felt fully confident of his ability to approach the music any way he liked, even on a standard in his own style. Just like Ray.

Barbara arrived with Linda eight days later, on the day after her twenty-third birthday, but by then Sam was already out on tour. Her uncle met them at the airport, and she was going to stay with him, but Sam had left the keys to his apartment and $2,000 in the bank for her to fix it up real nice. It was the same way she had started with Diddy, telling him she needed a steady job and then working as his housekeeper—which was how they ended up living together. Sam had told her he wasn’t going to be home for any length of time for quite a while, but she just hoped for her little girl’s sake that if he liked what she did with the apartment, it might work out the same way.

The tour had opened in San Jose on August 8 and worked its way up the Coast. It was a kind of Keen Records Revue, with Bumps’ wife, Marlene, opening, the Travelers singing pop songs and backgrounding Sam, plus Marti Barris, the Valiants, and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. The only nonlabel acts were Obediah “Young” Jessie, whose “Mary Lou” was a West Coast r&b staple, and, for one or two dates, a couple of young white guys named Jan and Arnie who had just graduated from high school and were coming off a big pop hit with “Jennie Lee.” No one could quite figure out what the white boys were doing there (“They were singing some of that surfer stuff,” said Bob Tate, “and it just didn’t go over”), and Young Jessie for some reason was given the unenviable task of following Sam, but they tore up the crowd everywhere they went, and even the Travelers got the house once in a while with their corny old routines.

“We had a ball,” said Rip Spencer of the Valiants’ experience on the tour. “We did ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly,’ ‘This Is the Night,’ Roy Hamilton’s tune ‘Don’t Let Go,’ and [Bobby Darin’s current hit] ‘Splish Splash.’ It was Billy, Brice, Chester, and myself, and Sam called us ‘Rip ’Em Up,’ ‘Brice ’Em Down,’ ‘Billy in the Middle,’ and ‘Chester on the Side.’ We were young, handsome guys, and I think Sam might have been a little jealous [even though] we were an opening act, because the girls really went for us. We had a routine, we had these nice red scarves, we’d wear them like ascots, and take them off and wave ’em, and the girls would grab them and like to pull me and Chester off the stage. Oh man, the girls were a dime a dozen. I mean, they would sneak in the hotels, climb up the fire escape, we had one group of girls would follow us from town to town, but if anything else came through, you just gave them the line, ‘We got to take care of some business.’”

Johnny “Guitar” Watson grew so tired of the Valiants’ adolescent high spirits that he put them out of the car on the way to Sacramento. He just said, “All right, you niggers, get out,” and roared off in his rose-colored Cadillac, leaving them stranded on the side of the road—which is where they might have remained if Kansas City Bell hadn’t come along right behind him in his little equipment camper and picked them up.

On their way to Oakland, Sam and Clif stopped off in Monterey to see Clif’s mother, who was still working as a domestic for a wealthy white family. She had never shown much interest in her son’s career, “she never had been for me being in music, because musicians as far as she was concerned were a bunch of bums.” But she was a great gospel singer, and when Clif told her that Sam used to sing with the Soul Stirrers, “from then on, man, he was king.”