Singer Bobby Womack made his name among music's legends
Singer Womack's long career intertwined with legends of soul, rock and R&B, writes Randall Roberts
The connections are endlessly surprising, those that Bobby Womack forged during a 60-year career that transcended genre, border and race. The singer, songwriter, guitarist and long-time Los Angeles resident, who died on June 27 at age 70, was the centre of a web as intricate and miraculous as his best songs and guitar lines.
After all, few can claim to have toured with soul legend Sam Cooke, yelled at the Who's Keith Moon for bouncing on Womack's new couch, learned of friend Jimi Hendrix's death through Janis Joplin, traded songs with Keith Richards and Ron Wood in Topanga Canyon, or rolled through Los Angeles in limousines at the peak of his success.
Get comfortable and maybe pop on Womack's greatest songs: Communication, Who's Foolin' Who, Lookin' for a Love (made famous by the J. Geils Band) or Harry Hippie. There's so much more.
Starting in the early 1960s, he learned to nail his guitar cues while on a multi-act tour with musical taskmaster James Brown. He married Cooke's widow a few months after Cooke was killed and decades later appeared on the breakout pop-rap album by Gorillaz. Two years ago he released The Bravest Man in the Universe, an album as inventive as anything in his storied career.
“Bobby was just the greatest. He had such a unique voice that nobody could imitate.”
A creative force who didn't stop working even when he was struggling with substance abuse and, later in his life, cancer, Womack is perhaps best known for writing It's All Over Now, the classic kiss-off made famous by a rising British Invasion band, the Rolling Stones. "She put me out It was a pity how I cried/Tables turn and now it's her turn to cry," sang a sassy Mick Jagger. "Because I used to love her/But it's all over now."