#my understanding is that papa one started it up in 1969 and then in the 2000s he came back and got replaced by papa 2 and then he gets

[leftoversludge]

bro i literally have homework for other classes i don’t have tiiimmeee to be filling my brain with all this ghost lore !!!!!!! i mean its already done, i already know everything about them now but like… i have a seven page essay i need to write….

[ybcpatrick]

i want to tell you about my nana.

her first name was mary, but she never ever went by it, that was just a catholic thing her mum did. she went by one of her middle names, nadine.

she was born on prince edward island on december 1st, 1949, the last of seven children. she moved to ontario in 1969, met my grandfather, got married on june 26th, 1971, then had their first child, my dad, a year to the very day. she had my aunt three years later. she loved them more than anything else on earth, and did everything in her power to make sure they were happy, safe, and cared for, even into their adult years. that extended to her grandchildren tenfold, and she adored being nana. to this day, she was the owner of the biggest heart i have ever encountered.

she always had carnations on the dining room table, and planted sunflowers along the fence that grew taller than her every single year. she went to clown college. she worked in the women's section at giant tiger. she was absurdly good at golf, and drew smiley faces on all of her balls so she knew they were hers from far away. she went to church every sunday her whole life. she took her coffee black, and i still have all of her mugs. she loved star trek: the next generation (data was her favourite), charlie chaplin, red skelton, the littlest hobo, touched by an angel, and m*a*s*h. she drove a blue oldsmobile with a wooden dolphin necklace hanging from the rearview mirror. her halloween costumes were always expertly crafted. her mother-son dance with my dad at my parents' wedding was to coat of many colours by dolly parton. she hung pictures of wolves and foxes around her house. she rocked a turtleneck with golden jewelry on the daily. all of her left shoes had a sole riser on them, because one leg was shorter than the other. she made sure she always kept nesquik syrup and double-crème cookies in her cupboards. she loved crafts, especially collages, and painting on woodwork that papa had started. the coffee and side-tables in her living room looked like gigantic books, and i can still smell the inside of the coffee table drawer where she kept my art supplies. her christmas village took up a solid third of the living room every year, glittering like magic.

she was strong-willed. she was driven. she was creative. she was faithful. she was compassionate. she was patient. she was the type to hear a baby babble and respond in kind, taking the nonsense sounds and treating them like they were articulate and valuable. to her, they were. everything a child said or did was the most important thing she'd heard all day, and she made sure that child knew it. everything i ever said to her was met with an unbelievable understanding and encouragement that i haven't experienced since.

she called me, and only me, pumpkin. she let me bring pooh bear with us everywhere, and even got him a high chair that hooked to the edge of the table so he could eat meals with us. she could sharpen my pencil crayons with her pinky nail. she kept everything i ever drew, and is the reason why i still do. she never made me feel silly, or embarrassed, or like i was too young or foolish to understand something. she never made me feel weird, because she was weird, too. she made sure we knew, while we had her and long after we didn't, that she loved us more than words. the eleven years i got to have her were like warm sunlight through the trees. she was comfort and quiet understanding wrapped up in a single person. she was my everything. she still is.

she died on tuesday, july 24th, 2012 around 4am. she was sixty-two years old. it was lung cancer, the kind that non-smokers and children get (and ironically, she had smoked at one point, but managed to kick the habit a few years before i was born). a year after she passed, her ashes were scattered over her brother's oyster bay on the island. my way by frank sinatra was the last song on the playlist for her celebration of life, and because of that, i can't listen to it more than once a year. but i can't deny that it was the perfect song choice for her. she was unyielding in her pursuit of her own happiness, and she was gonna take everyone she loved up with her, like it or not. she never compromised who she was. my nana was unapologetically herself, right to the end. and where she stopped, i decided i had to carry it on myself.

if you're still reading this, i'm glad to have gotten to share her memory with you. it's been twelve years since she had to go, and i was only eleven at the time; i will have to grieve her for longer than i ever knew her. but she's still alive every time i think of her, or i tell someone about her. and now i've told you about her.

thank you for letting her live again with you, even for just a moment or two. nana would've loved you, too.

[whileiamdying]

Cass Elliot’s Death Spawned a Horrible Myth. She Deserves Better

The Mamas & the Papas singer was known for her wit, her voice and her skill as a connector. For 50 years, a rumor has overshadowed her legacy.

Michael Putland/Getty Images

By Lindsay Zoladz Published May 9, 2024 Updated May 18, 2024

Onstage with her group the Mamas & the Papas at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, Cass Elliot, the grand doyenne of the Laurel Canyon scene, bantered with the timing of a vaudeville comedian. “Somebody asked me today when I was going to have the baby, that’s funny,” she said, rolling her eyes. The unspoken punchline — if you could call it that — was that she had already given birth to a daughter six weeks earlier.

“One of the things that appeals to so many people about my mom is that there’s a certain level of triumph over adversity,” that daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell, said over lunch at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles on a recent afternoon. “She had to prove herself over and over again.”

Elliot was a charismatic performer who exuded infectious joy and a magnificent vocalist with acting chops she did not live to fully explore. July 29 is the 50th anniversary of her untimely death at 32, a tragedy that still spurs unanswerable questions. Might Elliot, who was one of Johnny Carson’s most beloved substitutes, have become the first female late-night talk show host? Would she have achieved EGOT status?

Half a century after her death, her underdog appeal continues to inspire. Last year, “Make Your Own Kind of Music” — a relatively minor 1969 solo hit that has nonetheless had cultural staying power — became such a sensation on TikTok that “Saturday Night Live” spoofed it, in a hilariously over-the-top sketch in which the host Emma Stone plays a strangely clairvoyant record producer. “This song is gonna be everywhere, Mama,” she tells Elliot, played by Chloe Troast. “Then everybody’s gonna forget about it for a long, long time, but in about 40, 50 years, I think it’s gonna start showing up in a bunch of movies, because it’s a perfect song to go under a slow-mo montage where the main character snaps and goes on a rampage.”

Cass Elliot performing on her television special “Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore” in September 1973. After she went solo, she found it hard to shake her nickname.Credit...CBS Photo Archive, via Getty Images

“S.N.L.” didn’t make a single joke about Elliot’s weight — something that was unthinkable half a century ago. During the height of her fame, Elliot seemed to co-sign some of the jabs at her expense with a shrugging grin.

“No one’s getting fat except Mama Cass,” the Mamas & the Papas sang in tight harmony on the self-mythologizing 1967 hit “Creeque Alley.” After the infamously tumultuous group broke up a year later, Elliot was a frequent guest on “The Carol Burnett Show,” where she occasionally went for the cheap laugh. In an otherwise uproarious sketch about two prudish women browsing a store’s “dirty books” section, Elliot holds up a book titled “Eat and Lose Weight” and says, “I got as far as ‘Eat’ and then I didn’t understand the rest.”

“As she had learned early on, the best way to deal with an uncomfortable situation is with humor,” Elliot-Kugell, who has her mother’s cascading hair and dry wit, writes in her new memoir, “My Mama, Cass.” But, as she said over lunch, that doesn’t mean her mother was always laughing on the inside. “That pain had to go somewhere,” Elliot-Kugell told me. “When I think about some of the things that had allegedly been said to her during her lifetime, you can’t hear that over and over and not let it hurt.”

But of course, the most enduring joke at her expense was the one she didn’t live to tell, or to rebut. Have you heard the one about the ham sandwich?

For years, the origin of the story that Elliot died from choking on a ham sandwich — one of the cruelest and most persistent myths in rock ’n’ roll history — was largely unknown. Then in 2020, Elliot’s friend Sue Cameron, an entertainment journalist, admitted to publicizing it in her Hollywood Reporter obituary at the behest of Elliot’s manager Allan Carr, who did not want his client associated with drug use. (Elliot died of a heart attack, likely brought on by years of substance abuse and crash dieting.) But that cartoonish rumor — propagated in endless pop culture references, from “Austin Powers” to “Lost” — cast a tawdry light over Elliot’s legacy and still threatens to overshadow her mighty, underappreciated talent.

The Mamas & the Papas: Denny Doherty, Michelle Phillips, Elliot, Scott McKenzie (who joined a later version of the group) and John Phillips.Credit...Bentley Archive/Popperfoto, via Getty Images

ELLIOT’S SISTER, LEAH, coined a phrase for the strong, brassy way everyone in their family sang: “the Cohen Honk.”

Cass was born Ellen Naomi Cohen into a music-loving household in suburban Baltimore. Her stage name partly came from her father’s penchant for calling his spirited daughter “the mad Cassandra.” She was a precocious, uncommonly bright child who, in the years after World War II, liked to ask dinner guests what they thought about the “world situation.” In high school she was known for her bold, slightly unkempt personal style that flew in the face of 1950s decorum. According to her biographer Eddi Fiegel, Elliot sometimes wore “wild combinations of Bermuda shorts and high heels, with white gloves to cover her bitten-down nails.”

Many people in Elliot’s life trace her struggles with her weight to when she was 6 and went to stay with her grandparents while recovering from ringworm. They fed her well, as grandparents sometimes do, and she quickly became self-conscious about her size. By high school, she had been prescribed Dexedrine, an amphetamine then used as an appetite suppressant. “The thought that something is wrong with you is bad enough,” Elliot-Kugell writes, “but the idea that a pill or a drug might fix you can be even more dangerous.”

Still, Elliot showed remarkable self-belief. The book recounts her telling anyone who would listen “that one day she was going to become the most famous fat girl that ever lived.”

She struck a deal with her parents: If she moved to New York and didn’t find musical success in five years, she would come home and study a more respectable field, like medicine. She left home in late 1960; “California Dreamin’” was released in December 1965. She later told an interviewer: “I really just made it under the wire!”

Broadway was Elliot’s first love, but folk music was the style of the day. She brought her own distinctive flair to it in her early groups, the Big 3 and then the Mugwumps, which featured a Canadian tenor named Denny Doherty. After the Mugwumps’ split, Doherty fled to the Virgin Islands with his new friends John and Michelle Phillips to work on material for a yet-unnamed group. Elliot had sung with them casually while they were all hanging out — at least once when they were all on LSD — and she knew her voice was the missing piece in their sound.

But John, the bandleader, was brutishly reluctant. According to Scott G. Shea, a biographer of the Mamas & the Papas, Phillips “had a vision in his head” of “a group that not only sounded like an electrified Peter, Paul and Mary, but also looked like them.” Shea puts it bluntly: “Michelle was to be the centerpiece, and, in his mind, Cass was too fat to even be considered.”

The group projected a chumminess that was central to their appeal, but few people know how hard Elliot had to push to become part of the band. She showed up unannounced in the Virgin Islands hoping to ingratiate herself, but Phillips wouldn’t budge until an act of fate intervened. While walking down the St. Thomas alley that the Mamas & the Papas would later immortalize in song, debris from a construction site hit Elliot on the head and knocked her unconscious. John Phillips would later claim that Elliot’s concussion caused her vocal register to change, and it was another of those stories Elliot learned to repeat with a self-deprecating joke.

“The real story is that John didn’t like my mother’s look,” Elliot-Kugell writes. She believes “he made up the story about a fake increase in vocal range to justify his choice to finally add my mom to the band months later.”

Elliot went solo after the short-lived group’s demise, buoyed by the success of “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” a Mamas & the Papas single on which she sang lead. The final solo album she released, in 1973, had a pointed title: “Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore.” “The moniker of ‘Mama’ had always felt like a reference to her size — that is, ‘Big Mama’ — and she hated that,” Elliot-Kugell writes.

From left: Joni Mitchell, Elliot and Judy Collins at the Big Sur Folk Festival. Elliot became known as a connector in the Laurel Canyon scene.Credit...Sulfiati Magnuson, via Getty Images

Elliot remains an underrated heroine in the story of the Laurel Canyon scene, not only as a musician but also as an amiable hostess who knew how to link up like-minded people. Doherty liked to call her “the Puppeteer.”

In 1964, she introduced her friends John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky; they became the Lovin’ Spoonful. When she heard that David Crosby and Stephen Stills had begun making music together, she suggested they add a high voice to the mix, and brought them Graham Nash. “I will give you a hundred dollars,” David Crosby told Elliot’s biographer, “if you can find a single person who says they hated Cass.”

But there was also something bittersweet about Elliot’s kinship with all these men. “I think part of the reason they all adored her is they weren’t threatened by her,” Elliot-Kugell said. “She knew more about these guys and had a relationship on a deeper level than some of their own wives or girlfriends had.” She added with a wry chuckle, “Did that mean she didn’t want to jump into bed with half of them? She probably did!”

Elliot’s unrequited love for her bandmate Doherty was perhaps the hardest to bear, especially after he and Michelle Phillips had an affair that nearly broke up the band before their first album was even released. Elliot had been smitten since the night they met, at a Greenwich Village bar where they each threatened to drink the other under the table, and eventually decided to drink … under the table. As he put it in his one-man show about the group’s history, “I knew she loved me, and I loved her too, but not like she wanted me to. She did weigh 300 pounds, and I wasn’t man enough to deal with that.”

The most difficult passages of “My Mama, Cass” are those in which Elliot-Kugell reckons with her mother’s persistent loneliness. “After the shows, when they’re screaming her name onstage and she’s bowing, she was the only one going back to the hotel by herself,” she said. “Everybody else had someone, and she didn’t.”

Elliot’s need for love and companionship is what drove her to the decision — relatively radical for a famous woman in the late 1960s — to become a single mother. When she learned she was pregnant at the height of the group’s success, after a brief fling with its touring bassist, she was defiant in her decision to raise the child on her own. “As it turned out,” Elliot-Kugell writes, wrenchingly, “my mom’s desire to have someone in her life who wasn’t going to up and leave her was what led to her desire for a child. It’s how I came to be.”

The Mamas & the Papas onstage in 1966. The group split two years later.Credit...Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

WHEN I FINALLY got Sue Cameron on the phone, she was calling from the Atlantic Ocean, “somewhere between Bermuda and Portugal.” A journalist for more than 50 years who has published a book titled “Hollywood Secrets and Scandals,” she sometimes gives lectures on cruise ships. She was happy to reminisce about her old pal. “She had a big smile and this wide open face, very happy to see people,” Cameron said. “You just would immediately love her and want her to be your best friend.”

Cameron met Elliot when she interviewed the Mamas & the Papas in 1966; they realized they were neighbors and quickly became “sit-by-each-other’s-pool kind of friends.” Cameron has stories, like the one about the night they ran into Ann-Margret and Elliot delivered the perfect one-liner about her massive engagement ring (“I could skate on that”); or all the times Elliot would walk around with a credit card in her shoe because she didn’t like to carry a purse.

Her most painful memory is her final dinner with Elliot at Mr. Chow in the summer of 1974, before Elliot left for London. She’d never seen her friend so happy. “It was just a magical moment,” Cameron recalled. “It was just, like, the crescendo of her being. She’d had some TV specials, she was now going to go do a big nightclub act. Everything was fabulous.”

After a two-day stint of partying in London, Elliot told her friend Joe Croyle — a dancer in her show who was crashing with her at Harry Nilsson’s pad — that she was going to take a bath and turn in early because she was exhausted. Croyle figured she would be hungry too, so he fixed her a sandwich with ham, the only thing he could find in the fridge, along with some Coca-Cola. The ham sandwich, the cruelly cartoonish symbol that would come to define Elliot, was actually a gesture of care: a friend making her a meal she never got to enjoy.

Cameron heard about Elliot’s death in the newsroom of The Hollywood Reporter, where she was working at the time: “I kicked into professional mode and said, no one else is going to write that obit. I’m going to do it.” She tracked down Carr by phone in Nilsson’s apartment. “He could barely speak,” Cameron recalled. She asked what happened, and he said he didn’t know. “‘Oh, wait,’” she recalled him saying. “‘I see a half-eaten ham sandwich on the night stand. That’s good. You tell everybody that she choked on a ham sandwich, do you understand me?’”

“And I did it,” she added, “because I wanted to protect Cass.”

What was she protecting her from? “I was not aware of a lot of drugs,” she said. “I just wasn’t one of those people. And I had some suspicion around the time that she was going to London that she was on some sort of pills, but I didn’t really know anything.” In a split second, Carr and Cameron decided there was less shame in a woman ridiculed for her weight choking to death than there was in her having a drug problem. “What a terrible thing,” Cameron said, “but I was in too much of a state of shock to clean it up.”

She, too, is confounded by the story’s persistence. “Of all of the things I’ve done,” she said, “this ham sandwich has followed me my entire life.”

That story had long haunted Elliot-Kugell, too, though she felt some closure after Cameron privately divulged its origins to her when they met for lunch in 2000. Elliot-Kugell is cleareyed about what probably caused her mother’s death: “I mean, look. She was up for 48 hours, and she was at a party. Do the math.” But she doesn’t want to dwell on that. “The thing that was really important for me was that I didn’t want to write a salacious book,” she said.

In some sense, any memoir by a child of the Mamas & the Papas exists in the shadow of Mackenzie Phillips’s 2009 bombshell, “High on Arrival,” in which she accused her father John Phillips of sexual assault. But Elliot-Kugell’s memoir belongs on a different shelf entirely. It is a humanizing portrait of a woman whose legacy has, for far too long, been reduced to an outdated urban legend.

And it is a tale of an imperfect mother and a grieving daughter, of loss and long delayed catharsis. A few weeks before we spoke, Elliot-Kugell went to visit her mother’s grave. “It’s always weird when I go there, because I never know what to say,” she said. “But that day felt a little different because when I went up to the grave, I just said, ‘Hi.’ Like the way I would greet one of my cousins, or somebody who I know really well who I haven’t seen in a while.”

“I thought to myself, ‘Why, why why does it feel like this?’” she said.” All at once it dawned on her: “After going through this experience, I feel closer to her.”

Read by Lindsay Zoladz

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.

[fastlanehqs]

WELCOME TO MIDWAY, DUDE. Take a look our checklist for a few little deets before we get started.

OOC INFO

Alias: mikey

Age: twenty-three

Pronouns: they/them

Timezone: mst

Triggers: [REDACTED]

What made you want to join fastlanehq? I made it.

If you aren’t chosen for your first skeleton choice, what are your second and third choices? [REDACTED]

Are you applying for a wanted connection? If so, which one? n/a

Anything else? there's something about the girl next door...something that i can't ignore - emblem3 my top picks would be i wanna be a free girl by dusty springfield/beautiful by carol king/helpless by buffy sainte-marie…as a matter of fact….let me link my playlist

IC BLURB

[TAYLOR RUSSELL, CIS WOMAN, SHE/HER] Well, well, well, [GWEN GOODWIN], after that stunt you and your friends pulled, half of town didn’t think you’d make it to graduation! Let alone turning [18]. You’re getting a reputation as [THE GIRL NEXT DOOR] you know, it’s all the talk around [THE HUB]! Nevertheless, Principal Grauss announced your postgrad plans to [ATTEND THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA IN THE FALL] when you walked across that stage and got that diploma. Folks around Midway will always remember you as [MODEST, RESPONSIBLE] and [CAUTIOUS, INHIBITED]

WRITING SAMPLE

Please choose at least one of the three prompts to respond to in character. There is no word minimum or maximum! 

It’s a new decade, the world is at war again, and your character has developed a recurring nightmare. Describe the nightmare and your character’s reaction to it.

gwen wouldn’t call it a nightmare, but an itch. sure, it started at the beginning of spring semester with a bad dream, but she only had it twice! she’d be preoccupied with [THE BOY NEXT DOOR] in the familiar mildew-y creases of his basement couch. gwen would weave her fingers into his hair lost in the moment of … being a teenager. [THE BOY NEXT DOOR] grew glass for teeth, or fangs, or something equally horrific, she didn’t ever check. gwen would discover this by way of blood gushing from her lip. immediately, she’d panic, scouring the basement for tissues while [THE BOY NEXT DOOR] stood by dubious, well meaning, and unhelpful. that was before he’d vanish all together. her punctured lip bleeds, and bleeds, and completely drains her– gwen recalled waking up from it the first time, tears in her eyes, unsure of if she wanted her boyfriend in that moment or never wanted to see [THE BOY NEXT DOOR] ever again. either way, this was where the spiral began. following the second nightmare, gwen was determined to get the source of it. in the morning, she was sure to ready herself for the day efficiently so to get to the school library as early as possible. gwen hurried down the steps only to be faced with her parents in the kitchen. she treaded cautiously, god this was going to make them so sad. “gwennie!” her papa immediately set his paper down neatly, and stood to meet her with a hug. gwen grinned and she gave her dad a kiss on the cheek as her mom chimed, “good morning!” she crossed to mama and gave her the same, polite, hug and kiss. time to bear the bad news. “morning! um..i can’t stay for breakfast, i gotta get to the library.” gwen hated lying, but she had to sell it. “we gotta big test coming up.” the understanding disappointment that fell over their faces was an extra knife to the gut. but before they could talk about it, she waved them off and rushed out the front door. gwen did follow the speed limit on her drive to school, her mixtape of joni mitchell and dusty springfield rattling in the cassette player of her dark green, 1969 two door chevrolet caprice. papa got it for her for her sixteenth birthday that year, brand new. mama gripped her arm tight and whispered in her ear not to ask how much it cost. it took her a mere three minutes to get from the school parking lot to the library. gwen really hoped the librarians weren’t mad at her for not making normal conversation when she got in. she’d make up for it once she checked out these damn books out. gwen figured, if she could get to the psychological root of the dream, she could get it to stop and everything’d be just peachy again. unfortunately. midway high didn’t have the vast selection gwen was hoping for, and she walked away with a pitiful hull of one book– the psychology of dreams. freud. who was…controversial in the least. gwen wouldn’t call herself a fan. despite that, she was already flipping through the table of contents and key pages that would lead her on to anything helpful– blood? death? boyfriends? nothing was jumping out to her. she was second guessing checking it out, but when she spotted [THE BURN OUT] strolling into the library, gwen was sold. she was not checking this out. yes, [THE BURN OUT] was her friend, and no, they weren’t as close as they used to be. but it didn’t bother gwen. really! not one bit! gwen didn’t want [THE BURN OUT] seeing her book and relaying it to anybody in the group. this felt personal. she really didn’t want it sniffed out and gossiped about. which was a feat in a small town. 

gwen managed to tuck the book back on it’s shelf and when she made eye contact with [THE BURN OUT] she awkwardly greeted them, “mornin’…i’m just…studying!” she explained…inexplicably. the other sort of awkwardly waved back, smiled, then walked off to their corner. gwen didn’t blame them. they were probably busy! everyone was expecting them to end up valedictorian. still, she felt awfully embarrassed. tail between her legs, gwen shuffled to her favorite librarian, retta. for a moment, she simply stood there pitifully, gulping, blinking, the whole nine yards. she couldn’t help but be sensitive. retta raised a concern brow and gwen finally piped up, “can we get a coffee in your office?” she was hopeful. retta sighed, then waved gwen back with a small smile. 

thank god.

[tisthenightofthewitch]

Ghost’s Tobias Forge talks about being sued by Nameless Ghouls, spurned by the Vatican and immortalized in plastic effigy

When it comes to Swedish bands, Americans tend to think of pop icons like ABBA, black metal acts like Bathory, or the odd alt-rock band like The Cardigans, after which we stop thinking about them at all.But that was before the band Ghost began its slow yet inevitable ascent. Hailing from Linköping, a city in Sweden known for its ornate cathedrals, the bandmembers concealed their secret identities beneath elaborate costumery, a time-tested tradition fostered by bands like Kiss and The Residents. 

Occupying centerstage was Papa Emeritus, a skull-faced character fond of ghoulish corpse paint, a high-pointed hat and ornate papal vestments decorated with upside-down crosses. Standing stock-still at the microphone, his face frozen in a miserable scowl, the singer appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be hovering at death’s door or just beyond it. His bandmates, unceremoniously referred to as “Nameless Ghouls,” wore hooded robes and black masks, a look that soon began showing up at European cosplay conventions.

While this combination of corpse-paint, national origin and grinding guitar riffs led some critics to liken their sound to Swedish death metal, the keyboard-heavy liturgical vibe of Ghost’s early music arguably owed more to classic Pink Floyd.

That’s especially true of “Secular Haze,” the breakthrough single from their 2013 sophomore album Infestissumam. Following its release, the band put out the Dave Grohl-produced If You Have Ghost, a five-song covers EP that includes the Roky Erickson song of the same name, as well as renditions of Depeche Mode’s “Waiting for the Night” and, appropriately enough, ABBA’s “Like a Marionette.”

But 2013 also had its share of disappointments, including the ascension of Pope Francis, who was elected on the fifth ballot, thwarting Papa’s hard-fought and highly publicized campaign for the position.

The rest is history, of a sort. Following a series of European dates with Metallica, Ghost are now embarking on an arena tour of their own that will include an Oct. 1 concert headlining the Broadmoor World Arena. Their single “Cirice” won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance, while their most recent album Prequelle and its single “Rats” were respectively nominated in this year’s Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song categories.

Along the way, the band has gone through a succession of Pope characters —  Papa Emeritus I, Papa Emeritus II, and Papa Emeritus III — who have since been replaced by the far more kinetic Cardinal Copia, who has more of a mafioso image and hyperactive stage presence. All four frontman roles have been played by Tobias Forge, whose identity was outed two years ago when four former Nameless Ghouls filed a since-dismissed lawsuit alleging unpaid wages.

Ghost have also undertaken a series of musical transitions that became especially obvious with last year’s Prequelle, a concept album that employs the 14th-century black plague as an allegory for our current troubles. While Forge hasn’t fully abandoned his band’s past sound, tracks like “Rats” veer toward the ’70s arena-rock sound of Def Leppard, Foreigner, and even Journey, with whom the band toured last year.

In the following interview, Forge holds forth on a wide array of subjects, including litigious ex-Ghouls, the Swedish anti-vaccine movement and his alter-ego’s forthcoming immortalization — alongside legendary artists like Prince and Jean-Michel Basquiat — as a Funko Pop! figurine.

Indy: Let’s begin by talking about the concept behind your most recent album. It opens with that really creepy version of “Ring Around the Rosie, ” which is always a good way to start an album about the bubonic plague. Was there any specific reason why you chose that theme at this particular point in history?

Tobias Forge: Well, I think there are important lessons to be learned from all chapters of history. The plague was an epidemic that wiped out half of Europe, and, we can assume, traumatized the Asian population as well. And back then, people in general were uneducated, they were superstitious, they were religious, they believed in hocus-pocus. So it must have literally felt like the end of the world was just going to happen tomorrow. And that is always an interesting concept. Because we know now that it was not the end of the world. You know, mankind persevered. So while I believe in environmental issues, and that there are a lot of things that can be done in order to make the world a better place, I also think there’s not as much doom and gloom as it may appear.

So what would you say are the lessons we can learn from that period?

I guess the most simple and most obvious one is that we can debate forever — all day and night — about what happens after we’re dead. But I can promise you that we do not know. We can hope for there to be an afterlife, or 72 virgins, or whatever else is on your wishlist. But there’s no way of knowing. And anyone who tells you that they know, they are lying because they want something from you, or they want you to believe in something. And so I think your time and your energy will be better spent trying to embrace life instead of being wary of death. Because life is fragile, and you don’t know if you’ll have another one.

And then there’s this myriad of human instincts that comes into play when apocalypse is near, and one of them is who’s to blame for this, that, and the other. Back in the plague days, as I said, there was this predominance of religious people who believed in hocus-pocus and were pretty uneducated and pretty fucking dumb. They believed that female sexuality was to blame for essentially God abandoning mankind. So while you had people dying off in droves, you also had these people killing women because they were good-looking or, in one way or another, enticed some sort of sexual arousal. And that was obviously the work of the devil, and while they were alive, they would interfere with the survival of mankind. But unfortunately, those kind of very uneducated and outright stupid people are still well-represented in the world, and it’s very important that we address that.

Since you’ve researched and written about all this, I’m curious what you think about your country’s decision, back in March, to ban mandatory vaccinations.

Oh, that’s a good question, but I don’t really have a good answer. But I do think that there is a dichotomy between what the population might need, and what a pharmaceutical company needs for its own benefit. I’m trying not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but about 10 years ago, there was an outbreak of a flu, and companies would have entire offices vaccinated. And, on first glance, it’s like, “That’s great how society and all these bosses and corporations came together.” And I’m aware that the number of people that actually came down with it was not that many. So was that because of this shot, or was it because maybe the threat wasn’t as great as they were saying it was? Because, more often than not, there’s an economic incentive somewhere for someone. But not being a biologist nor a chemist, I don’t know anything about stuff like that. So, as I said, I don’t have a straight answer.

On a happier note, Funko’s Papa Emeritus II doll came out last month…

Yes, speaking of monetaries. [Laughs.]

That’s right. And I have to say, I’m really impressed by how realistic it is, especially in the way it just stands there and doesn’t do anything. How does it feel to be immortalized in that way?

I don’t really see it as that. I mean, when I sort of regard anything that we have done, even a photo, I don’t necessarily think of it as me being in that photo. I’m just sort of detached from the character on the visual side, which is to my benefit, actually. I’m way too vain, so I would have had a problem if it was my face that we were working with. So having the sort of official visuals of Ghost is actually quite liberating.

I understand that you started out playing in punk and death metal bands. Was Ghost the first time that you got to indulge your pre-The Wall Pink Floyd side?

No, I have played non-death metal in other bands before. But when Ghost started taking shape, I think I just found a way to write songs that sort of tick both boxes — one box being melodic pop-rock, or whatever it is, and the other being sort of metal. It felt playful, and it felt intuitive and progressive, for lack of a more fitting word. Whereas in the past, it’s like the metal bands were metal, and the rock bands were rock, and they didn’t combine the two. So I definitely found it more effective, and way more fun, to do something in between. Your stage presence is way more kinetic these days, although pretty much anything is more kinetic than standing in front of a microphone and scaring people. But you’re reaching the point now where the choreography in a video like “Rats” is borderline Michael Jackson. Is that the result of having more personal confidence these days?

Yeah, I would definitely say that. There are critics of the band who feel that the less animated version in the beginning was better and more ominous, and that we should still be embracing that. But a lot of the cryptic nature of Papa I was due to being constrained by the costume and the size of the stage.

And now we’re playing bigger places, where there’s way more ground to cover and there isn’t a single cord onstage that you can trip on, so of course you have to move around, right? I mean, if we were onstage now for two hours with that sort of unanimated version we were doing back in 2011, people would be demanding their money back. It’s just part of growing. You can see the same thing if you look at a clip of the Rolling Stones from 1964. Mick Jagger is Mick Jagger, but he’s definitely not the Mick Jagger that you see in 1969 or 1972. It takes time to build that confidence and find your own way of moving around.

I know you campaigned really hard for the pope’s job back in 2013. And I think a lot of your fans were really disappointed when the smoke came up the chimney and it turned out you didn’t get it. Do you think that your losing out to Pope Francis was the result of Vatican corruption?

Sure, most things going on there are because of corruption anyway. So I’m sure that was one of them. Or it might also have been my lack of faith — or my lack monetary means at the time — that prohibited my exaltation within the ranks of the Vatican.

And finally, I have a question about that lawsuit. Do you think that if you’d given names to your Nameless Ghouls, they would have been less vindictive?

You mean, if I’d given them names instead of making them completely anonymous? Probably, I guess. It’s hard to say. Because with most people that are drawn to the performance stage, you do so with a certain inclination to be seen and appreciated. So maybe if our positions were reversed, I would have felt the same way. Until seven or eight years ago, I really wanted to be famous, so my idea of being in a band was definitely different from what it turned out to be.

I’ve been in charge and working on this full-time, nonstop, for 10 years. Other people in Ghost would work a few hours every day, and then, during the four months between tours when I was making a record, they weren’t really doing anything that had to do with Ghost. And since I was representing the band at all of the meetings, I was getting pats on the back and feeling like what I was doing was good. Whereas, if you had nothing to do with the day-to-day stuff, you maybe didn’t get the pat on the back that you needed in order to feel fulfilled in life. So, you know, maybe if they had gotten their name on there, and could at least be recognized in the street, maybe that would have changed things. But on the other hand, I’ve played with others who didn’t give a shit about that happening.

COLORADO SPRINGS INDEPENDENT

[blackkudos]

Bobby Womack

Robert Dwayne Womack (/ˈwoʊmæk/; March 4, 1944 – June 27, 2014) was an American singer-songwriter and musician, and producer. Since the early 1960s, when he started his career as the lead singer of his family musical group the Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist, Womack's career spanned more than 60 years, during which he played in the styles of R&B, soul, rock and roll, doo-wop, gospel, and country.

Womack was a prolific songwriter who wrote and originally recorded the Rolling Stones' first UK No. 1 hit, "It's All Over Now" and New Birth's "I Can Understand It". As a singer he is most notable for the hits "Lookin' For a Love", "That's The Way I Feel About Cha", "Woman's Gotta Have It", "Harry Hippie", "Across 110th Street", and his 1980s hits "If You Think You're Lonely Now" and "I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much".

Early life

Born in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood, near East 85th Street and Quincy Avenue, to Naomi Womack and Friendly Womack, Bobby was the third of five brothers. Friendly Jr. and Curtis were the older brothers, Harry and Cecil were his younger brothers. They all grew up in the Cleveland slums, so poor that the family would fish pig snouts out of the local supermarket's trash. He had to share a bed with his brothers. His mother told him he could "sing his way out of the ghetto." Bobby recalls:

We came up very poor. My kids have had a much better life than I'd ever thought of livin'

And:

The neighborhood was so ghetto that we didn't bother the rats and they didn't bother us.

Raised Baptist, their mother played the organ for the church choir, and their father was a steelworker, part-time minister, and musician who played the guitar and also sang gospel. Their father repeatedly ordered his sons to not touch his guitar while he was away, yet all five brothers regularly played it while their father was at work. One night, eight-year-old Bobby broke a guitar string, then tried to replace the string with a shoelace. After Friendly deduced that Bobby (who was missing a shoelace) had broken the string, he offered Bobby the chance to play the guitar for him in lieu of a whipping.

Man, I played Andres Segovia, Elmore James and BB King. Even with one string short, I played classical music, soul, country and western, and rock’n’roll. I played my ass off. Every lick I knew and then some I didn’t. When I finished, Dad was in shock. He couldn’t believe how good I had got and he’d been real selfish holding on to that guitar for himself.

Soon afterwards, Friendly bought guitars for all five of his sons. Because Bobby was left-handed, he flipped his guitar upside-down to play, not knowing that the guitar could have been restrung to accommodate a left-handed player.

Career beginnings

By the mid-1950s, 10-year-old Bobby was touring with his brothers on the midwest gospel circuit as The Womack Brothers, along with Naomi on organ and Friendly Sr. on guitar. In 1954, under the moniker Curtis Womack and the Womack Brothers, the group issued the Pennant single, "Buffalo Bill". More records followed.

Sam Cooke, the lead singer of The Soul Stirrers, first saw the group performing in the mid-1950s. He became their mentor and helped them go on tour. They went on national tours with The Staple Singers. Even though Curtis often sang lead, Bobby was allowed to sing alongside him showcasing his gruff baritone vocals in contrast to his older brother's smoother tenor. During performances, Bobby would sometimes imitate the role of a preacher, which later became his nickname. At just 16, Bobby dropped out of high school.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Cooke formed SAR Records and signed the quintet to the label in 1961, where they released a handful of gospel singles. Then, Cooke changed their name to the Valentinos, relocated them to Los Angeles and convinced them to transition from gospel music to secular soul-and pop-influenced sound. Cooke produced and arranged the group's first hit single, "Lookin' for a Love", which was a pop version of the gospel song, "Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray", they had recorded earlier. The song became an R&B hit and helped land the group an opening spot for James Brown's tour. The group's next hit came in 1964 with the country-tinged "It's All Over Now", co-composed by Bobby. Their version was rising on the charts when The Rolling Stones covered it.

Womack was also a member of Cooke's band, touring and recording with him from 1961. The Valentinos' career was left shaky after Sam Cooke was shot and killed in a Los Angeles motel. Devastated by the news, the brothers disbanded and SAR Records folded. Womack continued to work as a session musician. Between 1965 and 1968, he toured and recorded with Ray Charles.

1967–1972: Early solo career

Circa 1965, Womack relocated to Memphis where he worked at Chips Moman's American Studios. He played guitar on recordings by Joe Tex and the Box Tops. Womack played guitar on several of Aretha Franklin's albums, including Lady Soul, but not on the hit song "Chain of Fools", as erroneously reported. His work as a songwriter caught the eye of music executives after Wilson Pickett took a liking to some of Womack's songs and insisted on recording them. Among the songs were "I'm a Midnight Mover" and "I'm in Love".

In 1968, Bobby signed with Minit Records and recorded his first solo album, Fly Me to the Moon, where he scored his first major hit with a cover of The Mamas & the Papas' "California Dreamin'". In 1969, Womack forged a partnership with Gábor Szabó and with Szabó, penned the instrumental "Breezin'", later a hit for George Benson. Womack also worked with rock musicians Sly and the Family Stone and Janis Joplin, contributing vocals and guitar work on the Family Stone's accomplished album There's a Riot Goin' On, and penning the ballad "Trust Me", for Joplin on her album Pearl. In fact, Womack was one of the last people to see Joplin alive, having visited her hours before she died at the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

After two more albums with Minit, Bobby switched labels, signing with United Artists where he changed his attire and his musical direction with the album Communication. The album bolstered his first top 40 hit, "That's the Way I Feel About Cha", which peaked at number two R&B and number twenty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1972.

1972–1985: Solo success

Following Communication, Womack's profile was raised with two more albums, released in 1972. The first was Understanding, noted for the track "I Can Understand It", later covered by the funk band New Birth and a three-sibling lineup of Bobby's old group, the Valentinos, and two hit singles, "Woman's Gotta Have It" and "Harry Hippie". The latter song was written for Womack by Jim Ford in a country version, which Womack re-arranged in an R&B version. "Harry Hippie" later became Womack's first single to be certified gold. "Woman's Gotta Have It" became Womack's first single to hit number one on the R&B charts.

Another hit album released after Understanding was the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Across 110th Street. The title track became popular during its initial 1972 release and later would be played during the opening and closing scenes of the 1997 film, Jackie Brown. In 1973, Womack released another hit album, Facts of Life, and had a top 40 hit with "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," an older song Sam Cooke had done years before.

In 1974, Womack released his most successful single during this period with a remake of his first hit single, "Lookin' for a Love". His solo version of the song became even more successful than the original with the Valentinos, becoming his second number one hit on the R&B chart and peaking at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming his only hit to reach that high on the pop chart. The song was featured on the album Lookin' for a Love Again and featured the minor charted "You're Welcome, Stop on By", later covered by Rufus & Chaka Khan. Womack's career began stalling after Womack received the news of his brother Harry's death. Womack continued to record albums with United Artists through 1975 and 1976 but with less success than previous albums. In 1975, Womack collaborated with Rolling Stones member Ronnie Wood, on Wood's second solo album, Now Look.

Womack languished with his own recordings during the late 1970s but continued to be a frequent collaborator with other artists, most notably Wilton Felder of the Crusaders. In 1980, Wilton Felder released on MCA Records, the album Inherit The Wind, featuring Bobby Womack, that became a jazz-funk classic, notably in the UK – Robbie Vincent at Radio London included the track as one of his all-time winners in October 1982. In 1981, Womack signed with Beverly Glen Records and had his first R&B top 10 single in five years – since the 1976 single "Daylight" – with "If You Think You're Lonely Now" that peaked at number three on the R&B singles chart. His accompanying album The Poet reached number one on the R&B album charts and is now seen as the high point of his long career, bringing him wider acclaim not only in the U.S. but also in Europe. He had two more R&B top 10 singles during the 1980s including the Patti LaBelle duet, "Love Has Finally Come at Last", and "I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much". He had a hit featuring on the Wilton Felder single "(No Matter How High I Get) I'll Still Be Looking Up to You".

1985–2014: Later career

Womack's solo career started to slow down after 1985, in part due to Womack's issues with drug addiction. After sobering up in the mid-1990s, he released his twentieth studio album, Resurrection on his close friend's Ronnie Wood's label. The album included session background work from admiring associates that included Rod Stewart, Ronald Isley, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. His remaining brothers from the Valentinos, Curtis, Friendly and Cecil, featured as background singers. Two singles from the album – a duet with Ronald Isley, "Tryin' Not To Break Down", and "Forever Love" – appeared on the Billboard R&B chart, but although the album contained two of Womack's best latter songs, "Cousin Henry" and "Don't Break Your Promise (Too Soon)", the album received a mixed critical reception. A gospel album, Back to My Roots, appeared at the end of the decade, but Womack largely concentrated on session and guest work for the next ten years.

He is the featured vocalist on June Yamagishi's My Pleasure album, on "Inherit The Wind", a track credited to Wilton Felder, and with Allen Toussaint on "Sputin", and he contributed vocals to Rae & Christian's version of "Wake Up Everybody". Other collaborations included "You Got What It Takes" with Diane Schuur, "Ain't Nothing Like The Lovin' We Got" with Shirley Brown, "Break the Chain" with Andrew Love & Wayne Jackson and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" with Jeanie Tracy.

In 1989, Womack sang on Todd Rundgren's "For the Want of a Nail" on the album Nearly Human. In 1998, he performed George Gershwin's "Summertime" with The Roots for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody, a tribute to Gershwin, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.

In 2010, Womack contributed lyrics and sang on "Stylo" alongside Mos Def, the first single from the third Gorillaz album Plastic Beach. Womack was told to sing whatever was on his mind during the recording of "Stylo". "I was in there for an hour going crazy about love and politics, getting it off my chest," said Womack. He also provided vocals on the song "Cloud of Unknowing" in addition to the song "Bobby in Phoenix" on their December 2010 release The Fall.

A new album was released on June 12, 2012 by XL Recordings of London. The album, The Bravest Man in the Universe was produced by Damon Albarn and Richard Russell. The first Song "Please Forgive My Heart" was offered as a free download on XL Recordings' official website on March 8, 2012. Contact Music reported that Womack was working on a blues album called Living in the House of Blues, featuring collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg and Rod Stewart. In an interview with Uncut, Womack revealed that the follow-up album would now be called The Best Is Yet To Come and feature Teena Marie and Ronnie Isley.

Womack duets with Van Morrison on "Some Peace of Mind", from Morrison's 1991 album, Hymns to the Silence, on Morrison's album Duets: Re-working the Catalogue released in 2015. Womack collaborated with Rudimental on "New Day", a song taken from their second studio album, We the Generation. He had expressed an interest in working with the group and they had exchanged ideas. Following Womack's death, his wife sent the group an a cappella vocal which he had recorded for them, and they pieced together the track.

Songwriting Legacy

Throughout his long recording career, many of Womack's songs have been covered by other artists. In addition to the famous Rolling Stones' version of "It's All Over Now", it has charted also with versions by Patti Drew in 1966 and as a duet between Womack and Bill Withers in 1975. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s other artists regularly recorded his songs. They included Ella Washington and Baby Washington, who recorded "I Can't Afford To Lose Him" in 1968, Jerry Butler, who released "Yes My Goodness Yes" in 1968, Margie Joseph, who issued "What You Gonna Do", and Roosevelt Grier, who had an R&B success with "People Make The World". One of his most famous songs, "Trust Me", was recorded by Janis Joplin and later by Winfield Parker amongst others. The 1960s and 1970s were especially profitable years for Womack's songwriting, either solo efforts or in partnership with the likes of Darryl Carter and Jim Ford. Whilst working as a session musician with Wilson Pickett he regularly contributed songs, including the original version of "I'm In Love", later covered by Aretha Franklin. Another Atlantic Records artist, Percy Sledge, issued "Baby Help Me" in 1967. The J. Geils Band covered "Lookin' for a Love", released on several albums, including the live album Blow Your Face Out.

In the following decade, Millie Jackson with "Put Something Down On It" , Kokomo and New Birth with "I Can Understand It", Ronnie Wood with "I Got A Feeling", and George Benson with the instrumental "Breezin", recorded versions of Womack songs. Lou Donaldson, the American jazz saxophonist, reinterpreted "You're Welcome To Stop On By" in 1974. The British singer Rod Stewart used the distinctive string arrangement from "Put Something Down On It" for his massive hit "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy". Other significant artists to record Bobby Womack songs include: Georgie Fame and Kelly Rowland with "Daylight", O V Wright's cover of "That's The Way I Feel About You" and reggae acts Dennis Alcapone, who issued a distinctive version of "Harry Hippy" entitled "Sorry Harry", and Triston Palma, who issued "Love Has Finally Come At Last" in 1984.

Jodeci's K-Ci Hailey, a notable admirer of Womack's work, covered "If You Think You're Lonely Now" in 1994. Hailey again covered Womack in 2006 with his rendition of "A Woman's Gotta Have It". The song is referenced in Mariah Carey's song "We Belong Together", a number one hit in June 2005. Carey sings "I can't sleep at night / When you are on my mind / Bobby Womack's on the radio / Singing to me: 'If you think you're lonely now.'" In 2007, R&B singer Jaheim interpolated the song as "Lonely" on his album "The Making of a Man". Neo soul singer Calvin Richardson also covered many of Womack's tunes. "That's the Way I Feel About Cha" was covered by the late R&B musician Gerald Levert and fellow singer Mary J. Blige on Levert's 1998 album Love & Consequences.

Film director Quentin Tarantino used "Across 110th Street" (which, in a different version, had been the title song of the 1972 movie) in the opening and closing sequences of his 1997 film Jackie Brown. His work has been used in several other popular films, including Meet the Parents (2000), Ali (2001) and American Gangster (2007). A 2003 Saab commercial used Womack's interpretation of "California Dreamin." In 2005, "Across 110th Street" appeared in the hit Activision video game True Crime: New York City.

On the 1994 release 1-800-NEW-FUNK, Nona Gaye covered "Woman's Gotta Have It", produced by Prince and backed by his band, New Power Generation.

During the spring of 1997, R&B singer Rome covered the original song from his self-titled debut album.

In 2008, Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child recorded her own version of his R&B hit "Daylight" with Travis McCoy of the Gym Class Heroes, which became a hit in the UK Singles Chart, where it was previously released as a single by Womack in 1976.

In 2009, Calvin Richardson was chosen to record a tribute album to Womack to coincide with Womack's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Grammy-nominated album was entitled Facts of Life: The Soul of Bobby Womack. It reached No. 30 on the US R&B chart.

In early 2012, Womack's career was the subject of the documentary show Unsung on TV One.

Personal life

Family life

In March 1965, just three months after Sam Cooke's death, 21-year-old Womack married Cooke's widow, Barbara Campbell, ten years his senior. The marriage was considered a scandal by some in the music business, and Womack found himself ostracized in the soul-music world. Womack's brothers turned against him, as did his audiences, and he was assaulted by Barbara's brother. Womack claimed he initially went to Barbara's side to console her following Cooke's death for fear that, if she were left alone, she would "do something crazy."

In 1970, Bobby and Barbara divorced after she found out that he had an affair with his 18-year-old stepdaughter Linda, daughter of Sam Cooke and Barbara. In the ensuing tussle, Barbara fired a gun at her husband. Vincent Womack, his son with Barbara, committed suicide in 1986, at age 21.

In 1974, Harry, Bobby's brother, was fatally stabbed in the neck with a steak knife by his jealous girlfriend.

Womack's second marriage (1976) was to Regina Banks with whom he had two sons, Truth Bobby and Bobby Truth, and a daughter, Gina. In 1978, Truth Bobby died aged four months old, and Womack turned again to cocaine. The marriage also ended in divorce.

From his relationship with Jody Laba, he fathered two sons, Cory and Jordan.

Linda, Sam Cooke and Barbara Campbell's daughter, later married Cecil, Bobby's younger brother. Bobby and Linda collaborated on the hit song "Woman's Gotta Have It" and he applied background vocals for Cecil and Linda as the pair teamed up as Womack & Womack. The song "Baby I'm Scared of You" by Womack & Womack, from their album Love Wars, was released as a single in the US and UK in 1983.

Drug addiction and health issues

Womack opened up about his frequent drug use in his memoirs, Midnight Mover. Womack said he began using cocaine sometime in the late 1960s. He had become close friends with Sly Stone, and was an enthusiastic participant in Stone’s infamous drug binges. Womack told Rolling Stone in 1984:

"I was really off into the drugs. Blowing as much coke as I could blow. And drinking. And smoking weed and taking pills. Doing that all day, staying up seven, eight days. Me and Sly [Stone] were running partners."

His cocaine use turned into an addiction by the late 1970s. Womack partially blamed his habit for his son Truth's death. Throughout most of the 1980s, Womack struggled with drug addiction. In the early 1980s his career slowed down partially due to his drug usage. At the end of the 1980s, he went into a rehabilitation center to get over his cocaine addiction, which he said he conquered.

Womack survived prostate cancer. A series of health problems would follow, including diabetes, pneumonia, colon cancer and the early signs of Alzheimer's disease.

Womack developed diabetes in his later years. It was revealed in March that Womack was diagnosed with colon cancer after Bootsy Collins reported it on his Facebook page. Womack announced afterwards that he was to undergo cancer surgery. On May 24, 2012, it was announced that Womack's surgery to remove a tumor from his colon was successful and he was declared cancer free. On January 1, 2013, Womack admitted that he struggled to remember his songs and other people's names, and later he was diagnosed with early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Death

Womack died at his home in Tarzana, California at the age of 70 on June 27, 2014. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, in The Great Mausoleum, Memorial Terrace, Memorial Terrace Columbarium, Map #ELVA0 (Elevation A), Niche 38260 in an unmarked niche.

Discography

Fly Me to the Moon (1969)

My Prescription (1970)

Communication (1971)

Understanding (1972)

Facts of Life (1973)

Lookin' for a Love Again (1974)

I Don't Know What the World Is Coming To (1975)

Safety Zone (1975)

BW Goes C&W (1976)

Home Is Where the Heart Is (1976)

Pieces (1978)

Roads of Life (1979)

The Poet (1981)

The Poet II (1984)

So Many Rivers (1985)

Someday We'll All Be Free (1985)

Womagic (1986)

The Last Soul Man (1987)

Save the Children (1989)

Resurrection (1994)

Back to My Roots (1999)

Traditions (1999)

The Bravest Man in the Universe (2012)

Awards and nominations

Grammy Awards

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

2011, Best Short-Form Music Video: "Stylo" shared w/ Mos Def & Gorillaz (Nominated)

In 2009, Womack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, his original vocal group, his brothers, The Valentinos (Friendly Womack, Jr., Curtis Womack, Harry Womack and Cecil Womack), wasn't inducted with him.

Wikipedia

[arkiivlll]

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/26/books/26paul.html

BOOKS

On the Road and Between the Pages, an Author Is Restless for Adventure

By ANNE GOODWIN SIDESAUG. 26, 2006

WHITE OAKS, N.M. — “I can’t live in towns anymore,” Gary Paulsen says, enjoying the view from his 200-acre ranch on the outskirts of an old ghost town in the Jicarilla Mountains, 40 miles from the nearest grocery store.

Living like a fugitive from society, the 67-year-old author says, is the only way he can think clearly. “I bought a house in a town near here, and a nice guy, a neighbor, came over to say hi,” he says, wincing. “It was too close.”

For generations of young, mostly male readers, Mr. Paulsen is one of the best-loved writers alive. With more than 26 million books in print, his name is practically synonymous with the wilderness adventure genre. He has won three Newbery Honor awards: for “Dogsong” (1985), “The Winter Room” (1989) and perhaps his best-known work, “Hatchet” (1987), about the only survivor of a plane crash in the Yukon.

“Gary Paulsen’s writing is very authentic, and kids sense that,” said Margaret Tice, coordinator of children’s services at the New York Public Library and a member of the Newbery committee. “He’s always lived his life on the edge and survived true adventures, but he’s not just an action man; he also knows how young people feel and think.”

Teri Lesesne, who teaches children’s literature at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex., has noted a special power in Mr. Paulsen’s work. “If I have a kid who’s a reluctant reader, all I have to do is hand him one of Gary Paulsen’s books,” she said. “It’ll change his life.”

Continue reading the main story

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Mr. Paulsen receives hundreds of letters a day. But his publisher can barely keep track of where to forward them, since Mr. Paulsen restlessly ricochets around the globe: training horses in New Mexico, running dogs in Alaska, riding his Harley across the American West, gunkholing around the South Pacific in his beat-up sailboat.

It’s deliberate: Mr. Paulsen is an unapologetic misanthrope, children excepted. “I don’t have anything against individuals,” he says. “But the species is a mess.” His throat tightens. “The last time I was up in Santa Fe, I wasn’t there 20 minutes before I brewed up, almost slugged a tourist on the steps of my wife’s gallery.” Ruth Wright Paulsen, his third wife, illustrated four of his picture books and a prose poem about an early American farm. “Now I try to be alone,” he says, pointedly.

Compulsively prolific, Mr. Paulsen produces a fresh book for young adults every few months, the vast majority of them novellas. His latest, “The Legend of Bass Reeves,” was published this month by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House. It is identified as “the true and fictional account” of a slave who became the most successful federal marshal in American history.

“He’d ride alone into the center of hell and bring the men out, alive, if possible, or, if necessary, draped dead over a horse,” Mr. Paulsen writes. “He did this 3,000 times. Miraculously, he was never wounded. He rejected countless bribes, and when his own son killed his wife, he tracked his son down, brought him to justice and sent him to prison for life.”

All true. But Mr. Paulsen’s book is a novel, and he openly fictionalizes his protagonist, imbuing Bass Reeves with some of his own traits and experiences. The best writing, he says, is “like carving pieces off your self.” An outcast who survives abuse and a hardscrabble upbringing, Reeves is an expert shot with a sixth sense for tracking and a shamanlike kinship with animals. “Reeves was honest and honorable, and just flat tough,” Mr. Paulsen says, as if he’s fiercely defending a friend’s good name.

Compact, with wolf-blue eyes set in a grizzled face, Mr. Paulsen strongly resembles Ernest Hemingway. There are other parallels. Mr. Paulsen’s prose is spare and well acquainted with death. At various points in his life, he has been tormented by Papa-like demons: too much anger, too much drink, too much emphasis on virility, too many wives, too much loneliness.

Receiving the first overnight guests he’s allowed onto his desert ranch, Mr. Paulsen seems wary but not unfriendly. He wears tall boots and walks gingerly along the overgrown path beyond his door, pointing out rocks and crevices where he’s spotted five rattlesnakes in recent days.

This is bear and mountain lion country, which is why he often carries a snub-nosed .38. “Cats kill you before they eat you,” he says. “Bears like to hold you down and rip your buttocks while you’re still alive.”

All right then.

“Shall we eat?” Mr. Paulsen asks, pulling a few bloody steaks and a plastic vat of potato salad out of the fridge and opening a can of beans.

He is wearing the Iditarod belt that he earned in 1983 on his first try at the brutal 1,049-mile dog-sled race across Alaska, when he finished 42nd in a field of 73. Since then, his love affair with sled dogs has been one of the few constants in his peripatetic life.

“The dogs have affected me in all ways,” he says. “In my understanding of people, in my understanding of love and hate. Once you break down the interlock between species, it’s astonishing.”

Mr. Paulsen also keeps a 40-acre spread north of Willow, Alaska, where he breeds and trains dogs for the Iditarod (which he ran for the third time last March). “From the northwest corner of my land, there’s nothing for 4,000 miles,” he says, his voice quickening with excitement. “There’re no towns, no roads, no people all the way to Siberia.” And few of the provocations of modern society that make him “brew up.”

Mr. Paulsen is a prodigious ranter of the Luddite persuasion; it takes little to set him off. The Internet: “It’s just stupid, faster.” Lawyers: “Miserable human beings.” Organized sports: “Mindless dreck!” Television: “Intellectual carbon monoxide, but hey, TV’s are fun to shoot!”

He grew up poor and lonely in the small town of Thief River Falls, Minn. “My folks were the town drunks,” he says. “We lived in this grubby apartment building. My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace.” He pretended to sell newspapers in pubs, raking the drunks’ money off the bar into his pockets when they were good and juiced. “I became a street kid,” he says. “Occasionally I’d live with aunts or uncles, then I’d run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.”

He said he was 13 when he stepped into a library for the first time. It was a frigid winter night. The library stayed open until 9 p.m., and its gold-tinted windows looked invitingly warm.

“The librarian typed my name on a card,” he remembers. “I looked at it and somehow that made me somebody.

Mr. Paulsen became a voracious reader, but not much of a student. “School didn’t work for me. I hated it,” he says. At 17, he forged his father’s signature to join the Army. Once, while he was testing missiles at White Sands, N.M., a Nike Ajax missed its target, locking onto a tagged buzzard instead.

In early 1965, he packed his Volkswagen Bug and drove to Hollywood, where he helped write dialogue for the television series “Mission: Impossible,” and the 1969 Steve McQueen film “The Reivers.” Then Mr. Paulsen left. “I started to like it too much,” he says.

In 1966, he checked himself into a cabin in the Minnesota woods, where he wrote his first book, “Some Birds Don’t Fly,” a collection of humorous essays about the missile industry.

Mr. Paulsen has lost count of how many books he has written since then. His Web site, garypaulsen.com, puts the tally at more than 175. Whether his subject is a slave who risks his life to teach others to read in “Nightjohn” (a book he adapted for a 1996 television movie), or an orphan on the streets of Juárez, Mexico, in “The Crossing” (a film version is now in preproduction), Mr. Paulsen is always writing to conquer his own dark, painful experiences.

“I’m a teller of stories,” he says. “I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I say what the hunt was like. It’s not erudite; it’s not intellectual. I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I’ve been through. And I’m still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.”

Mr. Paulsen stopped writing for adults 10 years ago. “It’s artistically fruitless,” he fumes. “Adults are locked into car payments and divorces and work. They haven’t got time to think fresh. Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I’ve got left, I intend to write artistic books — for kids — because they’re still open to new ideas.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: On the Road and Between the Pages, an Author Is Restless for Adventure. 

[sandiegodjstaci]

The Hipster's Guide to Classic Country Music

The Hipster's Guide to Classic Country Music

Let’s face it…if your mountain man beard, microbrew fetish, and pipe collection are no longer enough, classic country music can help you get to the next level of hipster (so can a pair of Wrangler jeans). My name is DJ Staci, the Track Star, and I grew up on country music. I lived on a 5-acre llama ranch just outside of Seattle during the grunge era…do you see how there’s a hipster seed in there? I knew I was not your standard redneck when, at 14, my dad’s hunting drew me towards vegetarianism (celebrating 26 meat-free years now). At 18, I pierced my nose and moved to southern California where I could eat tofu, get feminism tattoos, and vote for democrats in a diverse, shame-free environment…but that country music seed definitely grew roots throughout my childhood. In fact, during my 20s, I escaped my days of drinking expensive juice and visiting organic farmer’s markets by honky tonkin’ every week. I would go line dancing at the Brandin’ Iron Saloon in San Bernardino (the biggest & best honky tonk a.k.a. country bar west of Gilley’s…and watch John Travolta & Debra Winger in “Urban Cowboy” if you don’t understand either of those references).

  Memes from We Hate Pop Country

  Unfortunately, country music withered up and died after the 2000s. After DJing at the world’s largest country music festival (Stagecoach–the country cousin of Coachella), I had to stop listening to country music on the radio. The so-called country you hear on the radio today is known as “pop country” by country music purists (those of us who prefer classic country or “real” country). The artists who “ruined” country music are people like Taylor Swift, Sam Hunt, Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett, & Luke Bryant (and many others). Follow “We Hate Pop Country” on Facebook to learn more.

If you like “Wake Me Up” by Avicii, “Honey I’m Good” by Andy Grammer, “I Will Wait” by Mumford & Sons, “The Country Death Song” by the Violent Femmes, “Easy” by Sheryl Crow, “Wish I Knew You” by the Revivalists, “Wagon Wheel” by Old Crow Medicine Show, or Philip Phillips, classic country will be a great fit. If watching the movie Walk the Line turned you into a Johnny Cash fan, rest assured there is plenty more music like that out there. If you resonate as a defiant outsider or a feminist or a government-hating pothead, classic country music welcomes you with open arms! Classic country is outlaw music–pure and simple. It was created by people who knew they were on the outskirts of mainstream society and unshakingly flipped it the bird à la Johnny Cash at San Quentin (below).

  Johnny Cash after photographer Jim Marshall asked him to do a shot for the warden (San Quentin Prison – 1969)

  Did you know Loretta Lynn, who sang the feminist anthem “The Pill,” & Jack White from the White Stripes, who also has some killer bluegrass tunes, created an album together? Did you know Johnny Cash has covered songs by Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode? Have you heard Lady Gaga’s country roads version of “Born This Way?” Did you know Beyonce has a kick ass collab with the Dixie Chicks (the girl-power Texas band who was banned from country radio for saying they were ashamed that George Bush is from their home state) called “Daddy Lessons”? Did you know the black lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish bailed on the band so he could start a solo country music career (country fans know him as Darius Rucker)? Did you know when I DJ classic country parties, I have to ask the client if swear words are OK?

Do I have your attention now? I thought so. Let’s continue 🙂 You’ll love the country artists as much as you love their music–I promise.

  Justin Timberlake & Chris Stapleton performing together at the 49th Country Music Association Awards

  THE KING OF COUNTRY MUSIC

First, let’s start with the forefather of all country music kick-assery: Hank Williams. Hank signed to MGM Records in 1947 and his twangy anthems changed country music forever. He was famously fired by the Grand Ole Opry in 1952 after one of many no-shows. He lived a turbulent life that his son Hank Jr sings about in his cornerstone song “Family Tradition.” In true rock star style, Hank Sr. died of heart failure brought on by prescription drug abuse and alcoholism in 1953. Hipster-friendly Hank Williams songs include:

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry

Hey Good Lookin’

Jambalaya (on the Bayou)

Tear in my Beer

Your Cheating Heart

  TOP 125 CLASSIC COUNTRY SONGS FOR HIPSTERS

Pour yourself some Popcorn Sutton’s Tennessee White Whiskey (that’s legal moonshine for you city slickers) & get ready for some serious drinkin’ music free of “Friends in Low Places,” “Achy Breaky Heart,” “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” “Old Town Road,” and “The Git Up.” I’ve includes lots of notes & trivia about the playlist songs because we hipsters can’t just enjoy music in a vacuum…we like to sound like a seasoned expert when putting on a playlist for friends, yes? I’ve included standards as well as a number of “B sides” that will even impress country music enthusiasts…you know the kind of people who still say “Country Western.”

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18 Wheels & a Dozen Roses, Kathy Mattea

9 to 5, Dolly Parton

A Boy Named Sue, Johnny Cash

All My Exes Live in Texas, George Strait

Amarillo by Morning, George Strait

Are You Ready for the Country, Waylon Jennings

Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?, Waylon Jennings (Referring to Hank Williams Sr.)

Back Where I Come From, Kenny Chesney

Bed You Made for Me, Highway 101

Before Country Was Cool, Barbara Mandrell

Born to Boogie, Hank Williams Jr. (Hank Sr’s son)

Chattahoochee, Alan Jackson

Church on Cumberland Road, Shenandoah

Coal Miner’s Daughter, Loretta Lynn (Watch her biographical movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter” staring Sissy Spacek!)

Coat of Many Colors, Dolly Parton

Copenhagen, Chris Le Deux (Yep, chew killed this underground country singer with a cult following. His catchy, hilarious love song to Copenhagen chewing tobacco is like a country version of “Can’t Feel My Face” or “Mary Jane.”)

Copperhead Road, Steve Earle (Listen carefully…After coming home from war, this soldier gives up on the family tradition of making moonshine because he realized when he was in Viet Nam that he could just grow weed instead.)

Country Boy Can Survive, Hank Williams Jr.

Country Club, Travis Tritt

Country Roads, Take Me Home, John Denver (Lucky if I get through this one without tearing up…)

Cowboy Take Me Away, Dixie Chicks

Crazy, Patsy Cline (Sadly, the anthem of Battered Woman’s Syndrome…Patsy was in a violent marriage at the height of her fame. Written by Willie Nelson.)

Cripple Creek, Earl Scruggs & Lester Flatt

Devil Went Down to Georgia, Charlie Daniels Band

Digging Up Bones, Randy Travis

Dixieland Delight, Alabama

Down at the Twist & Shout, Mary-Chapin Carpenter

Dueling Banjos, Roy Clark & Buck Owens

El Paso, Marty Robbins (After writing this song, Marty Robbins was flying over El Paso & had a revelation that he was the cowboy in the song in a past life…so he wrote “El Paso City” about that experience.)

Elvira, Oak Ridge Boys

Elvira, Oak Ridge Boys

Every Little Thing, Carlene Carter (Yep, June Carter’s daughter…she called Johnny Cash “Stepdad.” Roseanne Cash’s “Tennessee Flat Top Box” is also a good one.)

Family Tradition, Hank Williams Jr (A proud nod to his famous father…”Put yourself in my position–if I get stoned and sing all night long, it’s a family tradition.” When you hear this song at a honky tonk, know the customs! When Jr sings, “Why do you drink?” The crowd shouts back “To get drunk!” When Jr sings, “Why do you roll smoke?” The crowd shouts, “To get high!” When he sings, “Why must you act out the songs that you wrote?” The crowd shouts, “To get laid!”)

Fancy, Reba McEntire

Fishin’ in the Dark, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Flowers on the Wall, Statler Brothers

Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash

Fool-Hearted Memory, George Strait (His first of SIXTY #1 hits–the most in country music history! Too many for this list but do check them out.)

Get a Rhythm, Johnny Cash

Guitars & Cadillacs, Dwight Yoakum (One of the few west coasters on the list…from Bakersfield, California — also a vegetarian!)

Have Mercy, Judds (A female country duo–mother & sister to famous actress Ashley Judd!)

Highway Man, The Highwaymen (The Highwaymen are Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, & Kris Kristofferson.)

Hillbilly Rock, Marty Stewart

Honky Tonk Man, Dwight Yoakum

Hooked on an 8-Second Ride, Chris Le Deux (Pronounced “Le Doo”)

Hot Rod Lincoln, Commander Cody

I Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This, Waylon Jennings

I Love a Rainy Night, Eddie Rabbitt

I Think I’ll Just Sit Here & Drink, Merle Haggard

I Walk the Line, Johnny Cash

I’m No Stranger to the Rain, Keith Whitley

If You’re Gonna Play in Texas, Alabama

If You’ve Got the Money, Willie Nelson

If Your Heart Ain’t Busy, Tanya Tucker

It Only Hurts When I Cry, Dwight Yoakum

Jackson, Johnny Cash & June Carter

Jolene, Dolly Parton

Jose Cuervo, Shelly West

Kaw-Liga, Hank Williams Jr. (Hank Sr also does this one.)

Lay You Down, Conway Twitty

Long Time Gone, Dixie Chicks

Louisiana Saturday Night, Mel McDaniel

Luckenbach Texas, Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson

Mama Tried, Merle Haggard

Maybe It Was Memphis, Pam Tillis

Meet Me in Montana, Dan Seals

Midnight Girl in a Sunset Town, Sweethearts of the Rodeo

Mountain Music, Alabama

Mud on the Tires, Brad Paisley

Mule Skinner Blues, Dolly Parton

My Kind of Girl, Colin Raye

Next to You, Shenandoah

No Time to Kill, Clint Black

Nobody Wins, Radney Foster

Norma Jean Riley, Diamond Rio

One Piece at a Time, Johnny Cash

Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line, Waylon Jennings

Orange Blossom Special, Johnny Cash

Pancho & Lefty, Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard

Papa Loved Mama, Garth Brooks

Past the Point of Rescue, Hal Ketchum

Pick-Up Man, Joe Diffie

Play Something Country, Brooks & Dunn

Redneck Girl, Bellamy Brothers (During the corresponding Redneck Girl line dance, when the song says, “A redneck girl got her name on the back of her belt,” dancers shout, “Bullshit! Bullshit! F— you!” When the song says, “She’s got a kiss on her lips for her man and no one else,” dancers repeat, “Bullshit! Bullshit! F— you!” When the song says, “A coyote’s howling out on the prairie,” dancers howl. Finally, the song says, “First comes love, then comes marriage.” After “love,” dancers interject, “Then sex!!!”)

Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash

Rockin’ With the Rhythm, Judds

Rodeo, Garth Brooks

Rough & Ready, Trace Adkins

Saturday Night Special, Conway Twitty (Yes, the same guy they famously poke fun at on “Family Guy”–see below)

Sin Wagon, Dixie Chicks

Smoky Mountain Rain, Ronnie Milsap

Sold, John Michael Montgomery

Some Girls Do, Sawyer Brown

Song of the South, Alabama

Stampede, Chris Le Deux

Stand by Your Man, Tammy Wynette

Straight Tequila Night, John Anderson

Streets of Bakersfield, Dwight Yoakum

Sweet Dreams of You, Patsy Cline

Tempted, Marty Stuart

Tennessee River & a Mountain Man, Alabama

Thank God I’m a Country Boy, John Denver (He’s an outspoken vegan and & rep for P.E.T.A #MeatlessMondays)

That Kind of Girl, Patty Loveless

That’s My Story, Collin Raye

That’s What I Like About You, Trisha Yearwood (She’s married to Garth Brooks & is a celebrity chef with a reality cooking show.)

The Gambler, Kenny Rogers

The Pill, Lorettta Lynn (Also check out her cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking.”)

The Race Is On, Sawyer Brown (or any of the older versions)

The Thunder Rolls, Garth Brooks

Ticks, Brad Paisley

Tight-Fittin’ Jeans, Conway Twitty

Tonight We Ride, Tom Russell (We played this at my dad’s funeral…definitely a “b side.”)

Tougher Than the Rest, Chris Le Deux

Tulsa Time, Don Williams

Two Feet of Topsoil, Brad Paisley

Walkin’ After Midnight, Patsy Cline (Check out the Cyndi Lauper cover!)

What Was I Thinkin,’ Dierks Bentley

When You Say Nothing At All, Keith Whitley (Alison Krauss’ version might be more popular though…)

Whiskey, If You Were a Woman, Highway 101

Why Not Me, Judds

Wide Open Spaces, Dixie Chicks

Will the Circle Be Unbroken, dozens of versions

Wrong Side of Memphis, Trisha Yearwood

You Ain’t Woman Enough, Loretta Lynn

You Really Had Me Going, Holly Dunn

You’ve Never Been This Far Before, Conway Twitty

    There are a few current country artists with that classic country sound: Chris Stapleton, Brothers Osborn, some Miranda Lambert (try “Gunpowder & Lead” or “Little Red Wagon”), or Cody Jinks.

If you’re afraid country music is too white, straight, or conservative for you, check out Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush,” Maddie & Tae’s “Girl in a Country Song,” the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” Los Lonely Boys’ “Heaven,” Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow,” Big & Rich’s “Love Train,” Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free,” John Anderson’s “Seminole Wind,” or anything by Charlie Pride, Cowboy Troy, k.d. lang, or Freddie Fender.

If you enjoy a good DJ mix, I’m not the only one doing creative things with country music–check out DeeJay Silver, DJ Sinister’s Country Fried Mix, VDJ JD, DJ Bad Ash, or DJ Hish (who I was on the roster with at the Stagecoach Festival and the Moonshine Miles Festival).

Film enthusiast? In addition to watching Johnny Cash’s biographical Walk the Line, you can also try some of these country cult classics: Coal Miner’s Daughter (about Loretta Lynn), Urban Cowboy (with John Travolta & Debra Winger), Pure Country (starring George Strait), Sweet Dreams (about Patsy Cline), Eight Seconds (with Luke Perry)…as well as anything starring Dolly Parton (like 9 to 5 or Steel Magnolias) or Kris Kristofferson (like A Star Is Born or Blade). Dwight Yoakum has a few famous cameos as well (like Sling Blade or Crank). But the real question is: are they “acting” or just “acting natural”? Once you understand that reference, you officially get a gold star in the hipster country music Olympics!!! (Leave me your thoughts in the comments below.)

If you enjoyed the Hipster’s Guide to Classic Country Music, I urge you to explore bluegrass and folk music. And, yes, I know not every “staple” classic country jam is on the list (again, comment below). I also have my Guitar-Infused Country & Classic Rock Wedding Cocktail Hour Playlist and Ultimate Bluegrass Wedding Cocktail Hour & Dinner Music Playlist you can scope out. Some say “crank it up,” but, around here, we say “Hank it up!” Enjoy your hip classic country tunes! 

  LISTEN TO THE HIPSTER’S CLASSIC COUNTRY PLAYLIST

Check it out on YouTube or Spotify.

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[nottherealericcarle-blog]

List of published works.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? written by Bill Martin Jr, 1967 Appealing animals in bold colors are seen and named in a rhyming question-and-response text that delights as it invites young readers and listeners to participate actively.

1, 2, 3 to the Zoo, 1968 Fun and learning add up to a perfect 10 in this eloquent but wordless counting book. Bright pictures tell the story: each car on the train has one more zoo animal than the one before it, and all arrive happily at the zoo in a dramatic foldout finale.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, 1969 This all-time favorite not only follows the very hungry caterpillar as it grows from egg to cocoon to beautiful butterfly, but also teaches the days of the week, counting, good nutrition and more. Striking pictures and cleverly die-cut pages offer interactive fun.

Pancakes, Pancakes!, 1970 Jack wants some pancakes, but first he must gather eggs from the chickens, wheat from the farmer, flour from the miller, milk from the cow, etc. His mother shows him how to cook and flip them, and hungry Jack knows what to do with them next.

The Tiny Seed, 1970 Poetic but simple text and lovely collage pictures dramatize the life cycle of all plants, as one tiny seed grows into an enormous sunflower, which then produces more seeds in its turn.

Tales of the Nimipoo by Eleanor B. Hardy, 1970 (out of print) Native American stories, with woodcut illustrations.

The Boastful Fisherman by William Knowlton, 1970 (out of print) An old Hawaiian tale of boastful fishermen who learn their lesson as they try to prove their fishing prowess. Colorful linoleum block print illustrations.

Feathered Ones and Furry by Aileen Fisher, 1971 (out of print) Gentle nature poems with woodcut illustrations, on acetate and art paper.

The Scarecrow Clock by George Mendoza, 1971 (out of print) Full color collages illustrate an amusing fantasy.

Do You Want to Be My Friend?, 1971 In few words but expressive pictures, a little mouse looks for a friend - and happily finds one just in time to save himself from a predator who has been hiding there all the time - unseen, but in plain sight! A simple story on the universal theme of friendship.

Rooster’s Off to See the World, 1972 Rooster and the colorful animals that join him on his journey to see the world, provide an enjoyable introduction to the meaning of numbers and sets.

The Very Long Tail (Folding Book), 1972 (out of print)  

The Very Long Train (Folding Book), 1972 (out of print) These two wordless books (now collectors’ items) are printed on heavy stock, accordion-folded, and come in their own plastic cases. “Read” or looked at in sequence, each tells a story in bright collage pictures. These innovative books can also stand alone, toy like, to form a decorated wall or play area for a child of pre-reading age.

The Secret Birthday Message, 1972 A message in code starts Tim off on an exciting treasure hunt through a dark cave, an underground tunnel, and other strange places until he finds a happy surprise. Die-cut pages demonstrate in a “hands on” way the meanings of place-words like up, below, through, etc.

Walter the Baker, 1972 By order of the Duke, Walter the Baker must invent a tasty roll through which the rising sun can shine three times. A lively and colorful retelling of the legend of the invention of the pretzel.

Do Bears Have Mothers Too? by Aileen Fisher, 1973 (out of print) Striking, poster-like pictures of a variety of animal mothers with their offspring - cubs, kittens, cygnets, and other charmers - are accompanied by verses by a beloved nature-poet.

Have You Seen My Cat?, 1973 A boy’s beloved pet cat has disappeared and he sets out to find it. In his search he meets many different kinds of cats, both wild and domesticated, before he finally discovers his own cat, who has a happy surprise for him. (Can you guess what it is?)

I See a Song, 1973 As a violinist, shown in black and white, starts to play, colorful semi-abstract images emerge from his music, transmuting magically from one to the next until the end, when the violinist, himself transformed into a many-colored figure, bows and leaves. Wordless, this beautiful book encourages children to develop their own visual and musical imagination and creativity.

My Very First Book of Numbers My Very First Book of Colors   My Very First Book of Shapes   My Very First Book of Words, 1974 A collection of split-page books in which children can match various familiar objects with numbers, colors, shapes, and words. A gamelike approach to learning, for very young children.

Why Noah Chose the Dove written by Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1974 Master story-teller and master illustrator combine their brilliant talents to produce a fresh and lively version of this favorite Old Testament tale of the animals as they vie with one another for a place of honor on Noah’s Ark. For all ages.

All About Arthur, 1974 (out of print) An Amusing And Articulate Alphabet-ical story for all ages, in well-chosen words and Zany pictures.

The Hole in the Dike written by Norma Green, 1975 The classic tale of the brave little Dutch boy who kept his finger in a leak in the dike all night long, preventing the damage from spreading, and so saved his town from a devastating flood. Inspiring story of a courageous small boy.

The Mixed-Up Chameleon, 1975 Hilarious pictures show what happens when a bored chameleon wishes it could be more like other animals, but is finally convinced it would rather just be itself. An imagination-stretcher for children.

Eric Carle’s Storybook, Seven Tales by the Brothers Grimm, 1976   (out of print) Seven of the most popular tales by the Brothers Grimm, retold by Eric Carle and illustrated in full color.

The Grouchy Ladybug, 1977 A grouchy ladybug who is looking for a fight challenges everyone it meets regardless of their size or strength. How this bumptious bug gets its comeuppance and learns the pleasures to be gained by cheerfulness and good manners is an amusing lesson in social behavior. Die-cut pages add drama and dimension.

Watch Out! A Giant!, 1978 Die-cut pages add to the excitement as two children outwit a scary giant.

Seven Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, 1978 (out of print) A companion to Eric Carle’s Storybook (above), this features seven favorite stories retold and illustrated by Eric Carle.

Twelve Tales from Aesop, 1980 (out of print) Familiar classic fables retold and illustrated by Eric Carle.

The Honeybee and the Robber, 1981 A brave little honeybee saves the day when a big hungry bear attacks the beehive. Ingenious pop-ups and other movable images bring this funny and informative story to vivid life.

Otter Nonsense by Norton Juster, 1982 (out of print) Very amusing, cartoon-like line drawings illustrate excruciatingly clever puns by noted author Norton Juster. Fun for all ages.

Catch the Ball! Let’s Paint A Rainbow   What’s For Lunch?, 1982 This delightful series incorporates movable parts, cutout shapes, and sturdy board pages that have been designed to encourage counting, adding, color naming, object identification, beginning reading, and manual dexterity.

Chip Has Many Brothers written by Hans Baumann, 1983 new title: Thank You, Brother Bear, 1995 An original tale,which skillfully combines elements of both North European and Native American traditions, tells of a little boy, Chip, who must make a long and dangerous journey to get the medicine that will cure his sick sister. Because he is both brave and kind, he is helped by the animals he meets along the way.  

The Very Busy Spider, 1984 With the use of raised printing, this innovative book adds the sense of touch to vision and hearing as ways to understand and enjoy the strikingly designed illustrations and the memorable story. Various farm animals try to divert a busy little spider from spinning her web, but she persists and produces a thing of both beauty and usefulness. Enjoyed by all audiences, this book’s tactile element makes it especially interesting to the visually-impaired.

The Foolish Tortoise written by Richard Buckley, 1985 A witty modern fable tells how a tortoise discovers the need for a shell after several scary encounters.  

The Greedy Python written by Richard Buckley, 1985 A companion book to The Foolish Tortoise (above), this tells of a python who is so excessively greedy that it finally eats itself.  

The Mountain that Loved a Bird written by Alice McLerran, 1985 A sensitive, poetic text inspires handsome, semi-abstract college illustrations, in this tale of a little bird that brings a renewal of life and happiness to a lonely, barren mountain.

All Around Us, 1986, (out of print)  

Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, 1986 Beautiful illustrations are enhanced by dramatic fold-out pages in this moving and imaginative tale of a father’s love for his daughter. Monica’s father fulfills her request by bringing the moon down from the sky after it’s small enough to carry, but it continues to change in size.

My Very First Book of Sounds My Very First Book of Food My Very First Book of Tools My Very First Book of Touch My Very First Book of Motion My Very First Book of Growth My Very First Book of Homes My Very First Book of Heads, 1986, (all out of print) A group of small-format books with bold, simple images and words, designed, as the titles indicate, for the very young child who is just learning to identify, name, and classify familiar objects.  

All in a Day collected by Mitsumasa Anno, 1986 Eric Carle, in collaboration with nine other internationally-acclaimed artists, reveals events in a day in the lives of children in various countries all over the world, showing time, climate, environmental and social differences but emphasizing the commonality of humankind everywhere. Thought-provoking as well as entertaining.  

A House for Hermit Crab, 1987 An underwater fantasy based on the true habits of hermit crabs and the flora and fauna of their marine environment, this book offers young readers an interesting first introduction to marine biology as well as an appealing story of Hermit Crab’s search for a house he can really call his home, as he grows throughout one year’s cycle.

The Lamb and the Butterfly written by Arnold Sundgaard, 1988 A protected lamb and an independent butterfly discuss their very different ways of living in a charmingly simple yet philosophical text on the themes of tolerance and diversity. Lovely full-color illustrations appeal to a wide audience range.

Eric Carle’s Treasury of Classic Stories for Children, 1988 A delightfully illustrated retelling of 22 favorite folktales, fairytales, and fables that every child should know. Retold from the works of Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Brothers Grimm.

Animals Animals compiled by Laura Whipple, 1989 A generously illustrated collection of poems by a variety of authors, describing the peculiarities and charms of pets as well as both wild and domestic animals. Eric Carle is noted for his depiction of animals and this colorful anthology contains some of his finest works.

The Very Quiet Cricket, 1990 The surprise ending of this enormously popular book features a chip that perfectly reproduces the real sound of a cricket’s song. In the story, a young cricket longs to make a sound by rubbing his wings together as many other crickets do. How he finally gets his wish is a romantic tale as well as a first look at natural history for the very young.

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? written by Bill Martin Jr, 1991 Easy, repetitive question-and-response text draws children into joyful interaction as they imitate the sounds of a variety of zoo animals for the zookeeper. Big, bold animal illustrations and lots of noisy fun.

Dragons Dragons compiled by Laura Whipple, 1991 Fearsome dragons and other fantastic legend creatures abound in this collection of poems, both modern and classic, all gloriously illustrated in full color, that will expand the world of a reader’s imagination.

Draw Me a Star, 1992 The artist’s drawing of a star begins the creation of an entire universe around him as each successive pictured object requests that he draw more. Based on Eric Carle’s recollection of his grandmother’s way of drawing a star (directions included), this seemingly simple story also provides insights into an artist’s private world of creativity. An inspiring book.

Today Is Monday, 1993 Based on the well-known children’s song, funny, full-color pictures show the foods featured for each day of the week. In a thoughtful new ending to the familiar text, all the world’s children are invited on Sunday to come and eat it up.

My Apron, 1994 A little boy longs to help his uncle, a mason, plaster the chimney. He feels very grown-up when he gets a work-apron of his own and the chance to do his own small share in real “grown-up” work. A touching story with a valuable message, illustrated in a striking technique using a strong black outline over bright color. A usable, child-size work-apron is included with the book for the reader who can’t wait to get started on his or her own work project.

The Very Lonely Firefly, 1995 Young readers empathize with the lonely firefly who makes many errors as he looks for the group where he will really “belong.” In his search for compatible companions, he meets many other night creatures, but none is quite right—until the happy surprise at the very end when the illustration of a swarm of friendly fireflies literally shines and twinkles a welcome in the night. Heartwarming.

Little Cloud, 1996 Every child loves to see fanciful shapes in the clouds. But what are clouds really for? Here a little cloud slips away from its parent clouds and turns itself into a series of wonderful forms - a sheep, an airplane, a hat, a clown - before rejoining the other clouds as they perform their real function: making rain.

The Art of Eric Carle, 1996 This handsomely-designed volume explores many facets of Eric Carle’s life and work. It includes an autobiography, illustrated with many photographs, telling of his early years in the United States, describing the roots of his inspiration, his art education in Germany, his career as a commercial artist on his return to the land of his birth, and his almost accidental discovery of his real vocation—creating beautiful picture books for young children. Essays and critical appreciations of his works, and color photographs showing how the artist creates his unique collage illustrations add to the interest and usefulness of this book. Fine reproductions of many of his best illustrations and a complete list of his books are included.

From Head to Toe, 1997 “I can do it!” is the confidence-building message of this book. As young children copy the antics of Eric Carle’s animals, they’ll learn such important skills as careful listening, focusing attention, and following instructions. Just as alphabet books introduce letters and simple words, From Head to Toe introduces the basic body parts and simple body movements - the ABC’s of dancing, gymnastics, and other sports activities.

Flora and Tiger: 19 very short stories from my life, 1997 Every so often, children who have grown up enjoying Eric Carle’s books ask him whether he has written “older” books. Inspired by his questioners, Eric Carle has written this delightful collection of short stories. The events in these stories take place from his earliest childhood to the present. All of the stories are true. But they are set down, not in the order in which they happened, but as they occurred to the author. They come from various places and times of his life and have three things in common: animals or insects, friends or relatives, and Eric Carle.

Hello, Red Fox, 1998 Mama Frog gets a big surprise when the guests arrive for Little Frog’s birthday party: Red Fox looks green to her! Orange Cat looks blue! With the active help of the reader, Little Frog shows Mama Frog how to see the animals in their more familiar colors. In this book, Eric Carle invites readers to discover complementary colors while enjoying the amusing story of Little Frog and his colorful friends.

You Can Make a Collage: A Very Simple How-to Book, 1998 Many people ask Eric Carle how he makes his pictures. Klutz Press and Eric Carle got together to answer that question in this simple how-to book, featuring 72 full-color printed tissue papers painted by Eric Carle with instructions and inspirations and even a bit of encouragement for those in a bit of need.

The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, 1999 HEAR the beetle CLICK as it flips through the pages of this book and learns how to land on its feet! Small readers will recognize and empathize with the clumsy little beetle’s eagerness to learn what the older beetle can already do so well. They will understand, too, its frustration when at first it fails. And they will surely rejoice in its eventual spectacular triumph.

Does A Kangaroo Have A Mother, Too?, 2000 Meet the little joey, whose kangaroo mother carries him in her pouch. See the cygnet riding on the back of the mother swan. Eric Carle’s colorful collages of animal babies with their caring and affectionate mothers offer small readers visual delight as well as comforting reassurance.

Dream Snow, 2000 It’s Christmas Eve, and an old farmer settles down for nap, wondering how Christmas can come when it hasn't snowed yet. The farmer falls asleep and in his dream, he imagines snowflakes covering him and his animals. He awakens to discover it really has snowed. A surprise at the end of the book makes this a truly magical Christmas.

“Slowly, Slowly, Slowly,” said the Sloth, 2002 Slowly, slowly, slowly... that’s how the sloth lives. He hangs upside-down from the branch of a tree, night and day, in the sun and in the rain, while the other animals of the rain forest rush past him. “Why are you so slow? Why are you so quiet? Why are you so lazy?” the others ask the sloth. And, after a long, long time, the sloth finally tells them!.

Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!, 2003 A dog, a cat, a rooster, a goat, a rabbit, and finally a child join together on a journey to see their friends in this unique bilingual collaboration that unites cultures and languages.

Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? written by Bill Martin Jr, 2003 Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? is told from the point of view of endangered creatures, and one dreaming child; each page a tribute to wild animals and their freedom.

Mister Seahorse, 2004 Mister Seahorse and fellow fish fathers who care for their soon-to-be-hatched offspring, share their stories while acetate pages reveal camouflaged creatures who bear witness to the conversation between fathers with fins.

10 Little Rubber Ducks, 2005 10 Little Rubber Ducks fall overboard and land on shores all around the world. Inspired by the true story of these ducks at sea, Eric Carle has imagined their voyage in the wide open waters and the creatures they meet who live in and around the ocean.

Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?, 2007 Join Baby Bear as he sets out to look for his beloved Mama Bear, meeting a diverse cast of North American animals along the way. Readers of all ages will enjoy the rich, colorful illustrations and heartfelt story of this last collaboration in a series that has helped millions learn to read.

The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse, 2011  

FRIENDS, 2013  

The Nonsense Show, 2015  

[latashaeastwood-blog]

Solitary Parenting Concerns.

LOS ANGELES (News agency) - Following are actually some crucial eduardportal-fitunddiet.info facts regarding Easy Biker," the groundbreaking 1969 biker movie routed by Dennis Hopper, which perished at his house in L.a on Sunday off difficulties from prostate cancer cells. On time 5, having said that, the mama scampered away from the den for an alcoholic beverage of water, coming back in lower than 2 minutes. Research studies have revealed prospective pupils look for visual verification from an eco friendly campus. Certainly, being actually the worrying new mama I am, I am actually rather horrified with the thought and feelings that there is a min possibility one thing may be inappropriate with my little one. Good one i pray The lord quick guide all parent to carry out their accountabilities as great mom as well as father, and God drive the youngsters properly for our company. If the interest deficit indications are actually still evident by at that point, this is actually the function mother as well as papa require to see their youngsters for at minimum 6 several weeks and take note. This needs to prevail feeling that you must keep away coming from junk food, convenience food, and also processed meals where achievable. My customer possesses actually possessed some remarkable specialist achievements, yet her mother was not able to ever before verify all of them for her.motherjones.com/files/Unhappy_300_0.jpg" width="323" /> When the birthing is concerning to develop, be observant of the mama canine's actions in order to recognize. While this area is a lot more pricey to go to than most, that is actually a terrific family members friendly location with tons of factors to do for the whole entire family members. Mama in regulation's tongue, additionally typically called the Serpent Plant, is actually an astonishingly quick and easy to grown up vegetation of the succulent household, calling for very seldom watering. This is such an effortless concept that I am actually continuously amazed at exactly how badly cherished that is actually and what does it cost? resistance that acquires when lifted. I fasted for You as well as in You do I believe as well as along with Your regulation (food) do I break my prompt. Because you recognize that she would just want the finest for you, a mama is actually the individual to go to for a therapy, suggestions or hug . Regrettably the mommy does not have the amount of time or even an understanding for poetry. Certainly not just the mama, but individuals around her also come to be really respectful in the direction of her, especially the father, he enjoys to look after you and also comes to be a lot more merciful in the direction of the baby as well as the mommy. His keep was actually certainly not quick; while there he complied with as well as came to be helpful with most of the sugar plantation's slaves. He must be shown where this proves out to go. If he starts to squatty in the house, create a bang, a holler, stamp a feet, slap palms, attempt to surprise the dog in to ceasing exactly what he is actually carrying out. One's own survival, also pets likewise this can possibly do. But for company to other is something distinct concerning human as well as I believe bondage where mama and youngster or even offspring.

[uncosmiclatte-blog]

What Do Immigrants Know That You Don't?

My parents determined to find to The U.S.A. at some point in the mid- 1960s, my papa can be found in 1966 as well as my mommy and also her five children did not show up until November of 1969. Why did it take so long? Well, as opposed to common belief, you cannot simply jump on a watercraft or plane and involve America. It actually takes years to obtain a valid visa to come to America. If you need assistance and guide, please go to this site http://topgun-lawyer.com/immigration-lawyer-in-san-diego.

We needed to have shots (I still have a big scar on my left arm to remind me that I have without a doubt been vaccinated against smallpox). We had to take these actually hideous passport photos. My Mother and father both had to travel back and forth to America and to our resources city for meetings and also to finish paperwork.

It's a long procedure as well as they truly look under the covers so-to-speak prior to they allow you from one country and also into an additional. I actually have loved ones who were not able to find to America as well as came into the United Kingdom as well as Canada rather.

As I was preparing this topic I started considering exactly what my moms and dads (as well as numerous other immigrants), needed to give up in order arrive right here, in the land of "milk as well as honey".

My parents were both well-educated. They were in the medical area and also we always stayed in a good house. Since I originate from a little country, we did not need to travel country miles to be with all our loved ones. My moms and dads weren't running away religious or political oppression, neither were they faced with financial challenge, the education, and learning system for the children was not subpar (my nation had an 83% literacy price back then) and also no one was depriving. They had actually merely listened to that there was some actually eco-friendly turf over in the US of A (together with a scarcity of trained registered nurses), as well as every person owned an auto, had interior plumbing as well as lived in the lap of luxuriously.

So they brought their proficient and enlightened selves to America where they after that needed to spend money on obtaining re-educated and, as well as withstand the temper and dislike of those that assumed they were "taking their tasks". And of course, their children getting attacked due to the fact that they "chatted funny" (you understand children can't tolerate individuals who are not like them). Hmm, I digress, well anyhow let's talk about this immigrant thing as well as get me out of the past, due to the fact that I might simply continue.

Immigrants, truthfully, have a stronger idea of the American Dream compared to do most born-and-raised Americans. They want to run the risk of everything (resources, flexibility, the way of living) to get to this shore. Why? To ensure that their kids could mature in America and in order to earn enough money to send back house for the ones that were left behind

To this end, they swim rivers, island jump to get closer, sneak in via Canada, utilize fake identifications (there are a lot of individuals below who are not who you believe they are), and stay in the anxiety of being caught as well as deported. So what did/do they know that you do unknown or have not made yourself aware of?

Immigrants know the important things that most of us have failed to remember - if you establish an objective, focus on that objective, and also job towards that objective believing it can be reached; you will get to the Paradise.

[blackkudos]

Bobby Womack

Robert Dwayne "Bobby" Womack (/ˈwoʊmæk/; March 4, 1944 – June 27, 2014) was an American singer-songwriter and musician, and producer. Since the early 1960s, when he started his career as the lead singer of his family musical group the Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist, Womack's career spanned more than 60 years, during which he played in the styles of R&B, soul, rock and roll, doo-wop, gospel, and country.

Womack was a prolific songwriter who wrote and originally recorded the Rolling Stones' first UK No. 1 hit, "It's All Over Now" and New Birth's "I Can Understand It". As a singer he is most notable for the hits "Lookin' For a Love", "That's The Way I Feel About Cha", "Woman's Gotta Have It", "Harry Hippie", "Across 110th Street", and his 1980s hits "If You Think You're Lonely Now" and "I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much".

Early life

Born in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood, near East 85th Street and Quincy Avenue, to Naomi Womack and Friendly Womack, Bobby was the third of five brothers. Friendly Jr. and Curtis were the older brothers, Harry and Cecil were his younger brothers. They all grew up in the Cleveland slums, so poor that the family would fish pig snouts out of the local supermarket's trash. He had to share a bed with his brothers. His mother told him he could "sing his way out of the ghetto." Bobby recalls:

We came up very poor. My kids have had a much better life than I'd ever thought of livin'

And:

The neighborhood was so ghetto that we didn't bother the rats and they didn't bother us.

Raised Baptist, their mother played the organ for the church choir, and their father was a steelworker, part-time minister, and musician who played the guitar and also sang gospel. Their father repeatedly ordered his sons to not touch his guitar while he was away, yet all five brothers regularly played it while their father was at work. One night, eight-year-old Bobby broke a guitar string, then tried to replace the string with a shoelace. After Friendly deduced that Bobby (who was missing a shoelace) had broken the string, he offered Bobby the chance to play the guitar for him in lieu of a whipping.

Man, I played Andres Segovia, Elmore James and BB King. Even with one string short, I played classical music, soul, country and western, and rock’n’roll. I played my ass off. Every lick I knew and then some I didn’t. When I finished, Dad was in shock. He couldn’t believe how good I had got and he’d been real selfish holding on to that guitar for himself.

Soon afterwards, Friendly bought guitars for all five of his sons. Because Bobby was left-handed, he flipped his guitar upside-down to play, not knowing that the guitar could have been restrung to accommodate a left-handed player.

Career beginnings

By the mid-1950s, 10-year-old Bobby was touring with his brothers on the midwest gospel circuit as The Womack Brothers, along with Naomi on organ and Friendly Sr. on guitar. In 1954, under the moniker Curtis Womack and the Womack Brothers, the group issued the Pennant single, "Buffalo Bill". More records followed.

Sam Cooke, the lead singer of The Soul Stirrers, first saw the group performing in the mid-1950s. He became their mentor and helped them go on tour. They went on national tours with The Staple Singers. Even though Curtis often sang lead, Bobby was allowed to sing alongside him showcasing his gruff baritone vocals in contrast to his older brother's smoother tenor. During performances, Bobby would sometimes imitate the role of a preacher, which later became his nickname. At just 16, Bobby dropped out of high school.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Cooke formed SAR Records and signed the quintet to the label in 1961, where they released a handful of gospel singles. Then, Cooke changed their name to the Valentinos, relocated them to Los Angeles and convinced them to transition from gospel music to secular soul-and pop-influenced sound. Cooke produced and arranged the group's first hit single, "Lookin' for a Love", which was a pop version of the gospel song, "Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray", they had recorded earlier. The song became an R&B hit and helped land the group an opening spot for James Brown's tour. The group's next hit came in 1964 with the country-tinged "It's All Over Now", co-composed by Bobby. Their version was rising on the charts when The Rolling Stones covered it.

Womack was also a member of Cooke's band, touring and recording with him from 1961. The Valentinos' career was left shaky after Sam Cooke was shot and killed in a Los Angeles motel. Devastated by the news, the brothers disbanded and SAR Records folded. Womack continued to work as a session musician. Between 1965 and 1968, he toured and recorded with Ray Charles.

1967–1972: Early solo career

Circa 1965, Womack relocated to Memphis where he worked at Chips Moman's American Studios. He played guitar on recordings by Joe Tex and the Box Tops. Womack played guitar on several of Aretha Franklin's albums, including Lady Soul, but not on the hit song "Chain of Fools", as erroneously reported. His work as a songwriter caught the eye of music executives after Wilson Pickett took a liking to some of Womack's songs and insisted on recording them. Among the songs were "I'm a Midnight Mover" and "I'm in Love".

In 1968, Bobby signed with Minit Records and recorded his first solo album, Fly Me to the Moon, where he scored his first major hit with a cover of The Mamas & the Papas' "California Dreamin'". In 1969, Womack forged a partnership with Gábor Szabó and with Szabó, penned the instrumental "Breezin'", later a hit for George Benson. Womack also worked with rock musicians Sly and the Family Stone and Janis Joplin, contributing vocals and guitar work on the Family Stone's accomplished album There's a Riot Goin' On, and penning the ballad "Trust Me", for Joplin on her album Pearl. In fact, Womack was one of the last people to see Joplin alive, having visited her hours before she died at the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

After two more albums with Minit, Bobby switched labels, signing with United Artists where he changed his attire and his musical direction with the album Communication. The album bolstered his first top 40 hit, "That's the Way I Feel About Cha", which peaked at number two R&B and number twenty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1972.

1972–1985: Solo success

Following Communication, Womack's profile was raised with two more albums, released in 1972. The first was Understanding, noted for the track "I Can Understand It", later covered by the funk band New Birth and a three-sibling lineup of Bobby's old group, the Valentinos, and two hit singles, "Woman's Gotta Have It" and "Harry Hippie". The latter song was written for Womack by Jim Ford in a country version, which Womack re-arranged in an R&B version. "Harry Hippie" later became Womack's first single to be certified gold. "Woman's Gotta Have It" became Womack's first single to hit number one on the R&B charts.

Another hit album released after Understanding was the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Across 110th Street. The title track became popular during its initial 1972 release and later would be played during the opening and closing scenes of the 1997 film, Jackie Brown. In 1973, Womack released another hit album, Facts of Life, and had a top 40 hit with "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," an older song Sam Cooke had done years before.

In 1974, Womack released his most successful single during this period with a remake of his first hit single, "Lookin' for a Love". His solo version of the song became even more successful than the original with the Valentinos, becoming his second number one hit on the R&B chart and peaking at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming his only hit to reach that high on the pop chart. The song was featured on the album Lookin' for a Love Again and featured the minor charted "You're Welcome, Stop on By", later covered by Rufus & Chaka Khan. Womack's career began stalling after Womack received the news of his brother Harry's death. Womack continued to record albums with United Artists through 1975 and 1976 but with less success than previous albums. In 1975, Womack collaborated with Rolling Stones member Ronnie Wood, on Wood's second solo album, Now Look.

Womack languished with his own recordings during the late 1970s but continued to be a frequent collaborator with other artists, most notably Wilton Felder of the Crusaders. In 1980, Wilton Felder released on MCA Records, the album Inherit The Wind, featuring Bobby Womack, that became a jazz-funk classic, notably in the UK – Robbie Vincent at Radio London included the track as one of his all-time winners in October 1982. In 1981, Womack signed with Beverly Glen Records and had his first R&B top 10 single in five years – since the 1976 single "Daylight" – with "If You Think You're Lonely Now" that peaked at number three on the R&B singles chart. His accompanying album The Poet reached number one on the R&B album charts and is now seen as the high point of his long career, bringing him wider acclaim not only in the U.S. but also in Europe. He had two more R&B top 10 singles during the 1980s including the Patti LaBelle duet, "Love Has Finally Come at Last", and "I Wish He Didn't Trust Me So Much". He had a hit featuring on the Wilton Felder single "(No Matter How High I Get) I'll Still Be Looking Up to You".

1985–2014: Later career

Womack's solo career started to slow down after 1985, in part due to Womack's issues with drug addiction. After sobering up in the mid-1990s, he released his twentieth studio album, Resurrection on his close friend's Ronnie Wood's label. The album included session background work from admiring associates that included Rod Stewart, Ronald Isley, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. His remaining brothers from the Valentinos, Curtis, Friendly and Cecil, featured as background singers. Two singles from the album – a duet with Ronald Isley, "Tryin' Not To Break Down", and "Forever Love" – appeared on the Billboard R&B chart, but although the album contained two of Womack's best latter songs, "Cousin Henry" and "Don't Break Your Promise (Too Soon)", the album received a mixed critical reception. A gospel album, Back to My Roots, appeared at the end of the decade, but Womack largely concentrated on session and guest work for the next ten years.

He is the featured vocalist on June Yamagishi's My Pleasure album, on "Inherit The Wind", a track credited to Wilton Felder, and with Allen Toussaint on "Sputin", and he contributed vocals to Rae & Christian's version of "Wake Up Everybody". Other collaborations included "You Got What It Takes" with Diane Schuur, "Ain't Nothing Like The Lovin' We Got" with Shirley Brown, "Break the Chain" with Andrew Love & Wayne Jackson and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" with Jeanie Tracy.

In 1989, Womack sang on Todd Rundgren's "For the Want of a Nail" on the album Nearly Human. In 1998, he performed George Gershwin's "Summertime" with The Roots for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody, a tribute to Gershwin, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.

In 2010, Womack contributed lyrics and sang on "Stylo" alongside Mos Def, the first single from the third Gorillaz album Plastic Beach. Womack was told to sing whatever was on his mind during the recording of "Stylo". "I was in there for an hour going crazy about love and politics, getting it off my chest," said Womack. He also provided vocals on the song "Cloud of Unknowing" in addition to the song "Bobby in Phoenix" on their December 2010 release The Fall.

A new album was released on June 12, 2012 by XL Recordings of London. The album, The Bravest Man in the Universe was produced by Damon Albarn and Richard Russell. The first Song "Please Forgive My Heart" was offered as a free download on XL Recordings' official website on March 8, 2012. Contact Music reported that Womack was working on a blues album called Living in the House of Blues, featuring collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg and Rod Stewart. In an interview with Uncut, Womack revealed that the follow-up album would now be called The Best Is Yet To Come and feature Teena Marie and Ronnie Isley.

Womack duets with Van Morrison on "Some Peace of Mind", from Morrison's 1991 album, Hymns to the Silence, on Morrison's album Duets: Re-working the Catalogue released in 2015. Womack collaborated with Rudimental on "New Day", a song taken from their second studio album, We the Generation. He had expressed an interest in working with the group and they had exchanged ideas. Following Womack's death, his wife sent the group an a cappella vocal which he had recorded for them, and they pieced together the track.

Songwriting Legacy

Throughout his long recording career, many of Womack's songs have been covered by other artists. In addition to the famous Rolling Stones' version of "It's All Over Now", it has charted also with versions by Patti Drew in 1966 and as a duet between Womack and Bill Withers in 1975. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s other artists regularly recorded his songs. They included Ella Washington and Baby Washington, who recorded "I Can't Afford To Lose Him" in 1968, Jerry Butler, who released "Yes My Goodness Yes" in 1968, Margie Joseph, who issued "What You Gonna Do", and Roosevelt Grier, who had an R&B success with "People Make The World". One of his most famous songs, "Trust Me", was recorded by Janis Joplin and later by Winfield Parker amongst others. The 1960s and 1970s were especially profitable years for Womack's songwriting, either solo efforts or in partnership with the likes of Darryl Carter and Jim Ford. Whilst working as a session musician with Wilson Pickett he regularly contributed songs, including the original version of "I'm In Love", later covered by Aretha Franklin. Another Atlantic Records artist, Percy Sledge, issued "Baby Help Me" in 1967. The J. Geils Band covered "Lookin' for a Love", released on several albums, including the live album Blow Your Face Out.

In the following decade, Millie Jackson with "Put Something Down On It" , Kokomo and New Birth with "I Can Understand It", Ronnie Wood with "I Got A Feeling", and George Benson with the instrumental "Breezin", recorded versions of Womack songs. Lou Donaldson, the American jazz saxophonist, reinterpreted "You're Welcome To Stop On By" in 1974. The British singer Rod Stewart used the distinctive string arrangement from "Put Something Down On It" for his massive hit "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy". Other significant artists to record Bobby Womack songs include: Georgie Fame and Kelly Rowland with "Daylight", O V Wright's cover of "That's The Way I Feel About You" and reggae acts Dennis Alcapone, who issued a distinctive version of "Harry Hippy" entitled "Sorry Harry", and Triston Palma, who issued "Love Has Finally Come At Last" in 1984.

Jodeci's K-Ci Hailey, a notable admirer of Womack's work, covered "If You Think You're Lonely Now" in 1994. Hailey again covered Womack in 2006 with his rendition of "A Woman's Gotta Have It". The song is referenced in Mariah Carey's song "We Belong Together", a number one hit in June 2005. Carey sings "I can't sleep at night / When you are on my mind / Bobby Womack's on the radio / Singing to me: 'If you think you're lonely now.'" In 2007, R&B singer Jaheim interpolated the song as "Lonely" on his album "The Making of a Man". Neo soul singer Calvin Richardson also covered many of Womack's tunes. "That's the Way I Feel About Cha" was covered by the late R&B musician Gerald Levert and fellow singer Mary J. Blige on Levert's 1998 album Love & Consequences.

Film director Quentin Tarantino used "Across 110th Street" (which, in a different version, had been the title song of the 1972 movie) in the opening and closing sequences of his 1997 film Jackie Brown. His work has been used in several other popular films, including Meet the Parents (2000), Ali (2001) and American Gangster (2007). A 2003 Saab commercial used Womack's interpretation of "California Dreamin." In 2005, "Across 110th Street" appeared in the hit Activision video game True Crime: New York City.

On the 1994 release 1-800-NEW-FUNK, Nona Gaye covered "Woman's Gotta Have It", produced by Prince and backed by his band, New Power Generation.

During the spring of 1997, R&B singer Rome covered the original song from his self-titled debut album.

In 2008, Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child recorded her own version of his R&B hit "Daylight" with Travis McCoy of the Gym Class Heroes, which became a hit in the UK Singles Chart, where it was previously released as a single by Womack in 1976.

In 2009, Calvin Richardson was chosen to record a tribute album to Womack to coincide with Womack's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Grammy-nominated album was entitled Facts of Life: The Soul of Bobby Womack. It reached No. 30 on the US R&B chart.

In early 2012, Womack's career was the subject of the documentary show Unsung on TV One.

Personal life

Family life

In March 1965, just three months after Sam Cooke's death, 21-year-old Womack married Cooke's widow, Barbara Campbell, ten years his senior. The marriage was considered a scandal by some in the music business, and Womack found himself ostracized in the soul-music world. Womack's brothers turned against him, as did his audiences, and he was assaulted by Barbara's brother. Womack claimed he initially went to Barbara's side to console her following Cooke's death for fear that, if she were left alone, she would "do something crazy."

In 1970, Bobby and Barbara divorced after she found out that he had an affair with his 18-year-old stepdaughter Linda, daughter of Sam Cooke and Barbara. In the ensuing tussle, Barbara fired a gun at her husband. Vincent Womack, his son with Barbara, committed suicide in 1986, at age 21.

In 1974, Harry, Bobby's brother, was fatally stabbed in the neck with a steak knife by his jealous girlfriend.

Womack's second marriage (1976) was to Regina Banks with whom he had two sons, Truth Bobby and Bobby Truth, and a daughter, Gina. In 1978, Truth Bobby died aged four months old, and Womack turned again to cocaine. The marriage also ended in divorce.

From his relationship with Jody Laba, he fathered two sons, Cory and Jordan.

Linda, Sam Cooke and Barbara Campbell's daughter, later married Cecil, Bobby's younger brother. Bobby and Linda collaborated on the hit song "Woman's Gotta Have It" and he applied background vocals for Cecil and Linda as the pair teamed up as Womack & Womack. The song "Baby I'm Scared of You" by Womack & Womack, from their album Love Wars, was released as a single in the US and UK in 1983.

Drug addiction and health issues

Womack opened up about his frequent drug use in his memoirs, Midnight Mover. Womack said he began using cocaine sometime in the late 1960s. He had become close friends with Sly Stone, and was an enthusiastic participant in Stone’s infamous drug binges. Womack told Rolling Stone in 1984:

"I was really off into the drugs. Blowing as much coke as I could blow. And drinking. And smoking weed and taking pills. Doing that all day, staying up seven, eight days. Me and Sly [Stone] were running partners."

His cocaine use turned into an addiction by the late 1970s. Womack partially blamed his habit for his son Truth's death. Throughout most of the 1980s, Womack struggled with drug addiction. In the early 1980s his career slowed down partially due to his drug usage. At the end of the 1980s, he went into a rehabilitation center to get over his cocaine addiction, which he said he conquered.

Womack survived prostate cancer. A series of health problems would follow, including diabetes, pneumonia, colon cancer and the early signs of Alzheimer's disease.

Womack developed diabetes in his later years. It was revealed in March that Womack was diagnosed with colon cancer after Bootsy Collins reported it on his Facebook page. Womack announced afterwards that he was to undergo cancer surgery. On May 24, 2012, it was announced that Womack's surgery to remove a tumor from his colon was successful and he was declared cancer free. On January 1, 2013, Womack admitted that he struggled to remember his songs and other people's names, and later he was diagnosed with early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Death

Womack died at his home in Tarzana, California at the age of 70 on June 27, 2014. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, in The Great Mausoleum, Memorial Terrace, Memorial Terrace Columbarium, Map #ELVA0 (Elevation A), Niche 38260 in an unmarked niche.

Discography

Fly Me to the Moon (1969)

My Prescription (1970)

Communication (1971)

Understanding (1972)

Facts of Life (1973)

Lookin' for a Love Again (1974)

I Don't Know What the World Is Coming To (1975)

Safety Zone (1975)

BW Goes C&W (1976)

Home Is Where the Heart Is (1976)

Pieces (1978)

Roads of Life (1979)

The Poet (1981)

The Poet II (1984)

So Many Rivers (1985)

Someday We'll All Be Free (1985)

Womagic (1986)

The Last Soul Man (1987)

Save the Children (1989)

Resurrection (1994)

Back to My Roots (1999)

Traditions (1999)

The Bravest Man in the Universe (2012)

Awards and nominations

Grammy Awards

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

2011, Best Short-Form Music Video: "Stylo" shared w/ Mos Def & Gorillaz (Nominated)

In 2009, Womack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, his original vocal group, his brothers, The Valentinos (Friendly Womack, Jr., Curtis Womack, Harry Womack and Cecil Womack), wasn't inducted with him.

Wikipedia