Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke (53 page)

J.W.’s only real frustration was Sam’s impulsive generosity toward his friends. He didn’t mind so much about Crain, even if Crain showed little interest in Alex’s plan for him to promote the record on the road—Crain at least was looking after Sam’s interests. He took great exception, though, to Sam’s attempt to foist Bumps on the partnership. “When we got back from Chicago, Sam said, ‘Alex, let’s call Bumps. We’ll give him a piece of the action.’ Because he thought Bumps knew something about the record business. But Bumps didn’t really know anything.” His only advice, in fact, was to cut the price to the distributor by two cents. But J.W. was not about to give up two cents on every record; as he well knew, it was a “penny business.” So other than a fruitless discussion or two, in which Bumps made it plain that in his view they would never be able to get along without him, nothing ever came of Sam’s suggestion, and J.W. let the matter drop.

Sam left the details of the business to Alex. None of it was of any great concern to him: pressing plants, distribution deals, discounts, accounting practices. He had full faith in his partner. Besides, he had other, more important business to take care of. He was getting married.

H
E HAD COME HOME
from Chicago to find Barbara getting ready to move out. Her minister had turned out to be a goldmine, and very little trouble besides. He liked to take her to a nice hotel and then read her his sermons while she was getting stoned. He didn’t care if she smoked reefer, his sexual demands were brief and few, he was a fat, ugly, little stubby man who was good to her daughter, happy to have Linda come to his house and play with his two children, and desperate to set Barbara up in the style that she deserved. She had finally decided to accept his offer—he wasn’t any different from any of the other players she had known; if she couldn’t have Sam, she could at least have a life of her own—when Sam showed up unexpectedly at the door. All her things were packed, and Linda was playing upstairs. Barbara assumed Sam was there for his daughter, so she offered to go get her, but Sam took in the scene and started quizzing her about her plans. She wouldn’t say anything at first, but she finally told him about her new “sponsor,” and for the first time since she had come to California a year before, she felt that she had actually captured his interest. It was Diddy all over again, the man was jealous, and, seizing her opportunity, she asked him what he had expected her to do after the way he had treated her. He seemed genuinely stung, just sat there with his head in his hands until he finally got out, “Well, Barb, what do
you
want to do?” She stared at him. What did
she
want to do? She had never wanted anything other than to marry him. She felt certain she could help him, she said, she knew she could add something to his career.

“So he said, ‘Well, okay, then, when do you want to get married?’ I said, ‘Today!’ Just like that.”

He seemed to mull it over briefly. And then he said that wasn’t right, they ought to get married in her grandmother’s house, where they had first courted—he was going out of town in a couple of days, and he had a solid month’s worth of bookings, but she could meet him in Chicago after he finished at the Flame, and then his father could marry them there, with all their friends and family present.

She felt a momentary twinge—maybe he was just trying to put her off once again. But she didn’t think it was going to be like that this time. Sam seemed to have at last made up his mind. They stayed up all night talking. Sam told her he had been in Reno with Sammy Davis Jr., and Sammy’s father had started asking questions about Barbara and told him, if he had a good woman in his corner, he should marry her. “Well, I was thoroughly shocked. Here I’d been trying to get the man to marry me for over a year. . . . But I thank God for Sammy Davis Jr.’s father!” Before he left, he gave her $2,000 to look for a new apartment and furnish it. She knew for sure Sam wasn’t going to back out now. So she told her preacher it was all over, and even though he cried and pleaded and made her all kinds of pledges and promises, she told him she was in love: he ought to be able to understand that.

S
AM STARTED A TWO-WEEK ENGAGEMENT
at the Bellevue Casino in Montreal a few days later, finally debuting his tap routine. He had showcased enough of his new act at the Casino Royal in Washington, D.C., in June for
Variety
’s reviewer to comment on his “pleasing and relaxed manner” and to predict that he “should be around the fancier cabarets for a long time.” Evidently he needed to go out of the country, though, before he was willing to test his terpsichorean skills on the public at large.

“You have to be more than just a straight singer to hold a crowd in the lofty Bellevue Casino,”
Variety
once again opined, “and that is just what Sam Cooke, young sepia performer, managed during his two-week stint there.” He could stand to straighten out his presentation, the reviewer went on, there were “too many bits and pieces of other singers apparent in his act,” and since he seemed “most at ease [with] the monotonous beat of rock ’n’ roll . . . his progress and polishing should start from this point. [But] a pleasant song-and-tap arrangement near end of session made a neat diversion and backing by guitarist-arranger Cliff White boosted act nicely.”

He carried much of the same act to the Apollo the following week (minus tap, top hat, and cane), as yet another reviewer from
Variety
attested. The show, which also featured tap dancer Bunny Briggs, “blue” comedian Redd Foxx, and r&b ingenue Barbara McNair, was “one of the brightest and best-paced reviews the Harlem vaudery has had in a long time,” while Sam, “a sort of hip and modern [very much middle-of-the-road singer] Billy Daniels, has a lot of relaxed charm and some swinging special full band arrangements behind his agile and pleasing vocals,” of which both “Ol’ Man River” and “Summertime” were “outstanding.” At the end of the set, taking his cue from relaxed television personality Perry Como and going to what one might think unnecessary extremes to distinguish himself from an extroverted showman like Jackie Wilson, Sam sang a medley of his hits while “draped casually over [a] stool.”

From there it was on to the Flame in Detroit, where, despite the absence of any written record, it can be assumed that Sam did much the same show to very much the same response.

Then he flew in to Chicago, on Friday, October 9, to get married.

B
ARBARA APPEARED COMPLETELY CALM
when she met him at the airport on Friday. Which was understandable because, as so often in her highly charged moments with Sam, she was stoned. She and Linda had arrived the day before and were staying at a hotel on Fiftieth overlooking the lake. Sam expressed his usual surprise at how well she was able to maintain her cool. For all of his so-called sophistication, he didn’t have a clue. He was so damned naive about certain things, she thought—but that was
his
problem. It was her secret, and she was going to keep it. They got their license at the county courthouse, and then Sam had her drive him downtown so he could pick up some presents for her: a mink stole, some jewelry, a wristwatch. He told her to circle the block while he collected his purchases, but this was one time her cool betrayed her, and she had been driving around aimlessly for nearly half an hour when Sam finally spotted her and whistled her down. Where had she been? he demanded. But she answered—still calmly—that she had just been following his directions and driving around.

The wedding on Sunday was everything she could ever have imagined. They all gathered at her grandmother’s house on Ellis Park: her sisters and their husbands, her mother and stepfather, Crain, Sam’s friends Duck and Sonny Vincent, their photographer friend from the
Defender,
Cleo Lyles, and all of Sam’s family. Her grandmother’s living room was filled with gladioli, Linda was practically jumping out of her skin with excitement, and Barbara felt good about herself for once. She was wearing a simple, fitted beige dress with a scoop-neck lace top to set off her beautiful new diamond choker, and her hair was done up in a neat bob with bangs that framed a pretty, oval face which was, at least today, wreathed in smiles.

Sam’s father gravely presided, and Sonny and Duck both stood up for him while Barbara’s twin sister, Beverly, was her best girl. Sam had had her diamond band specially made by Jess Rand’s jeweler in New York, and there was a lot of kidding among the men about how Sam wasn’t going to be able to tell the twins apart. But Sam told L.C. later that if this marriage didn’t work out, he would never marry again, he would just get seven women, give them all Cadillacs, “and be with whoever I want to be with”—and L.C. wasn’t sure that he was joking.

That night, they went to see Al Hibbler at one of the clubs on Sixty-third, and Hibbler introduced them from the stage as man and wife. Al got Sam to come up and sing with him, and then he had Sam bring Barbara up. “Man, she’s pretty,” the blind singer said as he felt the contours of her face. “Man, she’s real cute.” The next day, they flew back to California so that Barbara could continue fixing up the airy two-bedroom duplex she had found for them at 2704 West Forty-third Place, a few blocks from Leimert Park, just down from Baldwin Hills. It was the beginning of their new life together.

But if Barbara was expecting things to change in any fundamental way, she was immediately disappointed. Sam was at home for less than a week, and he was running around town attending to all kinds of business even then. His protracted struggle with Keen was about to come to a head. On September 23 the lawyer Jess Rand had recommended, Sam Reisman, had demanded a full accounting from Keen, and, in the absence of any meaningful response, he was about to sue to have Sam’s contract voided. Sam and Alex had already attempted to confront the company about songwriting and publishing royalties on their own. They went into John Siamas’ office to ask for their money, and Siamas told them he couldn’t pay. J.W. understood the company’s dilemma—once it became known that Sam was refusing to record for the label and that there were legal issues involved, there was no way to keep the distributors from concluding that, without any more Sam Cooke hits coming from Keen, there was no real incentive to pay. Nevertheless, as Alex saw it, the situation was not altogether lost until John Siamas treated Sam with the kind of disrespect that Art might have shown when, instead of dealing with the situation directly, he tried to put it off on his lawyer. “Sam just said, ‘Come on, Alex, let’s go.’ He said [to John Siamas], ‘You got an unhappy boy on your hands.’”

Before leaving town, Sam had told Barbara that if she needed anything, she should just get in touch with his manager. He spoke excitedly about plans for their future together, but mostly, it seemed to Barbara, he was talking either about their daughter or about her improving herself by going to college—which she just could not see. And then he was gone, just like he always was, playing “Achievement Day” (another redneck word for “Nigger Day”) at the Dallas State Fair on Monday, October 19, the same date that his lawyer formally brought the lawsuit against Keen.

B
ILLBOARD GAVE THE SOUL STIRRERS’
new SAR release a four-star review (“Fervent . . . moving”), and to the astonishment of nearly everyone except Sam and Alex, Alan Freed even played “Stand By Me Father” in the last days before the gathering rock ’n’ roll payola scandals forced him off the New York airwaves once and for all. A Top 40 station in Pittsburgh picked up on it, too. “Everybody thought it was Sam singing,” said J.W. “Johnnie sounded so close, and we [did nothing to] discourage the rumor, ’cause it could only help.”

Meanwhile, Jess seemed to have finally gotten Sam’s movie career off the ground. Earlier in the year, he had obtained an interview for Sam at Paramount. He was counting on Sam’s charm to win over the studio executive, and, before going in, suggested to Sam that he might cite “repertory work” in Chicago if he was quizzed about prior experience. Things were going fine until the guy started asking Sam questions about some of the roles he had played, and Sam just kept getting in deeper and deeper until finally, Jess said, “the man just looked at Sam and said, ‘You’ve never acted a day in your life, have you?’ And Sam looked back at him and said, ‘I’m doing it right now.’ We walked out of that place screaming and laughing!”

This time, there was a more satisfying dénouement, as Jess got Sam a supporting role in a Sammy Davis Jr. half-hour drama, “The Patsy,” which was scheduled to be broadcast on CBS’ Sunday-night
General Electric Theater,
hosted by Ronald Reagan, the following February. Sammy, who had gotten his first dramatic role on the same series just the year before, vouched for Sam. It was a role that offered few lines but a good deal of on-screen exposure in an ensemble piece set in an army barracks that had previously been done with an all-white cast. Sam never hesitated, though the fee came to only $500 and he knew there would be plenty of hard work involved. In fact, he was so enthusiastic that he leapt at Jess’ suggestion that they drive to Las Vegas so he could rehearse with Sammy, who was headlining at the Copa Room at the Sands for most of November.

Sammy, it turned out, didn’t have the same enthusiasm for rehearsal, and Sam was forced to chase him around in almost humiliating fashion, carrying his script in an otherwise empty briefcase and grabbing whatever time he could. Finally, in desperation, he suggested a breakfast meeting, but Sammy just gave him that big grin and said, “I don’t get up for breakfast, baby.” He was also brought face-to-face with the harsh realities of show-business segregation once again. On their first night in Vegas, he and Jess were relegated to the worst table in the house, and only grudgingly at that. Sam did his best to hide his disappointment, but Jess could see that for all of his sophistication and all of his extensive experience in the business, he was deeply hurt to discover that even at the pinnacle of show-business success, the only way you were going to be treated well was when you were the show. Sammy went to bat for him, and Jess practically made a scene, and after that, they always got a good table, no matter how the other patrons might stare. “But he knew,” said Jess, “if he wasn’t standing next to Sammy Davis Jr., he wouldn’t be standing there [at all].”