Dream boogie: the triumph of Sam Cooke (68 page)

Boogie-Woogie Rumble

H
E WAS IN ATLANTA
on April 12, 1962, playing the Rhythm Rink on yet another Henry Wynn Supersonic tour, when the idea for the song came to him. The billing for this “Spring Spectacular” was different from most of Henry’s previous shows, taking its cue from a thirty-day Supersonic tour the previous fall that had pitted Jackie Wilson against white rock ’n’ roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis (amidst a solid slate of r&b stars) in what was advertised as the “Battle of the Century.” This time it was Dion (formerly of Dion and the Belmonts) who was the lone white star in a sea of r&b talent that included twenty-two-year-old Atlantic recording artist Solomon Burke, a warm, charismatic singer just beginning to make a name for himself, the Drifters, Dee Clark, and B.B. King. For Dion, who had embarked upon a solo career in the fall of 1960 with his appearance on the Biggest Show of Stars tour that briefly included Sam, “it was kind of tense at times,” stemming not just from the situation in the South but from the racial attitudes that a number of the r&b musicians had by now, understandably, developed on their own. “Sam was a kind of champion for . . . cooling everybody out,” said Dion, and, as on the earlier tour, some of Dion’s most treasured memories were of singing with Sam backstage—“he was full of music.”

The idea for the song had been simmering for some time. Its original inspiration had come from hearing blues stylist Charles Brown sing his original composition “I Want to Go Home” every time Sam played syndicate boss Screw Andrews’ Copa Club in Newport, Kentucky, a wide-open town across the river from Cincinnati. Charles, perhaps the most influential blues singer of the late forties and early fifties, with a delicate but distinctive piano style and the soft confidential vocal approach that had stamped such numbers as “Drifting Blues,” “Black Night,” and the perennial “Merry Christmas Baby” as instant blues classics, was an individual of considerable charm, prodigious intelligence, and an equally prodigious attraction to gambling—which was what had landed him in Newport, “a no-man’s land,” as Charles described it, where they
killed
people who didn’t live up to their end of the bargain. Whenever at one time or another he tried to leave, Screw Andrews (né Frank Andriola), to whom his debt kept on accruing, would raise the question of who loved Charles best, tip the singer $100, express his appreciation for all that Charles had done for business, and point out, “You know, I bought you that limousine Cadillac with the gold wheels.” To which Charles could only gratefully assent. Then Screw would say, “You wouldn’t want to find a bullet in your head down the road, would you?” and Charles, who viewed Screw as a kind of second father, would declare, “Oh no, Papa, I don’t want to go. I’m not going.” And he didn’t. At least not until the Kennedy administration Justice Department came in and closed down the town in mid-1961, Screw got sick with cancer, and Charles took off for Los Angeles, where his grandfather had fallen ill.

Sam and Luigi.

Michael Ochs Archives.com

Sam told Charles he was going to record his song from the moment he first heard it. It was based on the old spiritual “Thank God It’s Real,” and, like the “sorrow songs” of the slaves, had its own secret and subversive message. “I want to go home, I want to go home, ’cause I feel so all alone,” Charles sang, and he really
meant
it—but Screw Andrews, oblivious to the underlying text, pronounced it his favorite song and asked Charles to sing it over and over again. Charles even recorded it, first for Johnny Vincent’s Ace label, then for King Records in Cincinnati, both times with one of his most popular disciples, fellow Texan Amos Milburn, who had had number-one r&b hits himself with “Chicken Shack Boogie” and “Bad, Bad Whiskey.” In fact, when Charles came out to Los Angeles and played the Club Intime all through January and February, Sam went to see him and talked to him about playing piano on a session that would include his song. When Charles’ grandfather died, Sam offered to help with the funeral expenses. But Charles told him, “No, Sam, my papa was insured good. He was a Mason and everything.” And rather than pursue the idea of playing on Sam’s session, Charles maintained his own priorities. “I went to the races [instead].”

Sam and Johnnie Morisette.

Courtesy of ABKCO

Sam and L.C. with SAR recording artist Jackie Ross, Chicago, March 2, 1962.

Courtesy of ABKCO

Sam stayed busy at home. He focused primarily on SAR business, with time for an album session of his own with Luigi in mid-February to capitalize on the success of “Twistin’ the Night Away,” which was rapidly closing in on number one on the r&b charts. Sam contributed such unlikely originals as “Twistin’ in the Kitchen with Dinah” and “Camptown Twist,” along with a sprightly duet with Lou Rawls on “Soothe Me,” now that the Sims Twins hit had run its course. He produced sessions on Patience Valentine and Clif White, but mostly he was concentrating on trying to get Johnnie “Two Voice” Morisette and Johnnie Taylor the kind of hit the Sims Twins had already enjoyed.

He cut Johnnie “Two Voice” in early January with a song Alex thought he should have kept for himself. It was called “Meet Me at the Twistin’ Place,” and what made the record was the audible party atmosphere created by studio visitors like Ricky Nelson, local chanteuse Toni Harper, and René Hall’s wife, Sugar, all of whom contributed to the chorus, and Johnnie’s typically manic falsetto ad lib at the fade. “Oh meet me, meet me, baby,” he screamed in that strangled half cry that fell somewhere in between gospel intensity and unintentional parody:

I’ll be looking for you, and I know you can’t miss me

’Cause I’ll have my red suit on

And Caldonia will be there

And Paul will be there

You know, Della will be there

And Uncle Remus will be there

And don’t forget Ol’ Man Mose

He’ll be there

Oh, come on, you better meet me

(Meet me at the twistin’ place)

Alex remained dubious about Johnnie (“He’s got to make up his mind whether he’s a singer or a pimp,” he told Sam, “they’re both full-time jobs”), but he loved the song. He thought it was better produced than “Twistin’ the Night Away,” and it got plenty of airplay when it was released two months later, even if the distributors laid down on it after it entered the pop and r&b charts in April.

The record that he and Sam both had their hopes set on, though, was Johnnie Taylor’s “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day.” It was a song, like “Wonderful World,” with a history. This time it was the Prudhomme twins, Betty and Beverly, the ones with the striking (and not entirely unintentional) resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, who had written the original, not long after meeting Sam in the summer of 1957. They took it to producer Fabor Robinson, who wanted them to record it themselves on his Malibu-based Radio label, but when Beverly told him she was pregnant, he gave it to country singer Johnny Russell, an eighteen-year-old Mississippian whose family had recently moved to Fresno and who recorded it as the B-side of his first single. In Russell’s version it was little more than a dour ballad in B-minor whose chorus, repeated three times with minimal variation and no discrete, individual verses, was the centerpiece of the song: “It takes time / Give me time / And the world will be yours and mine,” it went, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

The Prudhommes were always pitching songs to Sam with little encouragement from Alex (“J.W. told us, ‘I can hardly get him to do my tunes—how can you expect him to do yours?’”). They maintained a flirtatious relationship with Sam, which they knew Barbara didn’t like and Zelda clearly resented, too, but “we loved him as a friend, we loved music together, he was a really cute guy with a beautiful personality, he was always a gentleman with us, and if you went somewhere with him, he’d have you laughing half the evening.”

Sam heard something in their song that they didn’t and asked if he could fool with it. They told him he would have to deal with Fabor Robinson on the publishing, but it was certainly okay with them, so he added two verses, recast it as a more up-tempo number, flavored it with his characteristic sixth chords and a hint of a Latin beat, and changed the message from one of dogged persistence to a more adroit tone of his own. “Give me time, give me time,” the singer now urges his reluctant lover, “And I’ll make your love as strong as mine.” Betty and Beverly loved what he had done to their song. But then, without telling them, he brought it to Johnnie Taylor.

Johnnie was still debating whether or not he had made the right decision in signing with SAR in the first place. A tight, suspicious man by nature, Johnnie had listened to friends tell him over and over that Sam had only added him to the SAR roster to ward off direct competition, that he would never promote a rival who sounded so much like him—and the sales of his one SAR release to date only went to prove those friends right.

This was a better session from the start. It was better prepared, Sam had brought in better material, René had assembled a solid ten-piece ensemble anchored by Clif on guitar and Earl Palmer on drums, and Lou Rawls was available for background singing—it was just like one of Sam’s own sessions. Sam worked everybody hard, but no one harder than Johnnie. He stayed on Johnnie about his pronunciation, his emphasis, and his meaning. He was very particular with the backup singers on how to swing the chorus without holding on to their notes and getting in the way of the lead vocal. And he kept checking with Johnnie to make sure he understood, showing him exactly how he wanted it done but urging everyone, always, to keep it funky.