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Authors: Pamela Des Barres

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BOOK: Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon
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S. R. Crain was indignant. “That’s where you put people who ain’t got nowhere to go!” he fumed. “You wouldn’t put a man like Sam Cooke in the morgue!” But Barbara had been sedated after hearing the dreadful news and was in no shape to handle anything. Sam’s body hadn’t been claimed. She asked Crain to take care of it, and he called People’s Funeral Home in Los Angeles.
Sam Cooke had a double funeral. Thousands of stricken mourners viewed the body in L.A. before it was taken to Chicago so the Reverend Charley Cook and his wife, Annie May, could say goodbye to their son. So many people attended the ceremony that it took police forty minutes to escort the Cook family to their front-row pews. Many of Sam’s musical contemporaries turned up to show their respects. Cassius Clay was among the mourners and later voiced his feelings: “I don’t like the way he was shot. I don’t like the way it was investigated. If Cooke had been Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, or Ricky Nelson, the FBI would be investigating yet, and that woman [Mrs. Franklin] would have been sent to prison.” Sam’s body was flown back to Los Angeles for the final funeral rites. Outside the Mount Sinai Baptist Church, hawkers sold photographs of Sam in his coffin in Chicago, as throngs of weeping fans crowded into the service, where Lou Rawls and Ray Charles sang heavenly songs for their dear departed friend. As Ray Charles was led down the aisle, he stopped to place his hands on Sam’s casket, tears streaming down his face. Sam was buried at Forest Lawn under a small bronze plaque:
SAM COOKE
I LOVE YOU
1930–1964
UNTIL THE DAY BREAK
AND THE SHADOWS FLEE AWAY
A lovely sentiment, but somehow somebody got the year of Sam’s birth (1935) wrong. A lot of things were wrong. People who had been to the funeral talked of seeing the young singer Bobby Womack wearing Sam’s clothes that day, and less than two months after the death of her husband, Barbara Cooke announced her engagement to the twenty-year-old SAR recording star.
One month after Sam’s death Lisa Boyer (a.k.a Crystal Chan Young, Jasmine Jay, and Elsie Nakama), who claimed Sam Cooke had kidnapped and tried to rape her, was charged with prostitution. In 1979 she was found guilty of shooting her boyfriend dead and went to prison. Nobody knows where Lisa/Crystal/Jasmine/Elsie is today. According to unconfirmed reports, the motel manager Bertha Franklin, who was awarded thirty thousand dollars from Sam’s estate for “battery,” died in Michigan a year and a half after shooting him through the heart.
Cassius Clay (soon to become Muhammad Ali) pays his last respects to his friend Sam Cooke. (UPI/BETTMANN)
After a brief inquest during which Sam was depicted as a drunken Negro in a rage, the coroner deemed that the shooting of Sam Cooke was “justifiable homicide.” It didn’t seem to matter that the kidnapper/rapist had signed his own—very famous—name to the register. Or that his ID, credit cards, and money had never been found. And what happened to the ring he had been wearing? Why hadn’t anyone staying in the motel heard any gunshots? Nobody was buying the story. But very close confidants feel that Sam had been a victim of his own dangerous habits. Though some wondered why the successful, debonair singer was found in such a seedy neighborhood, pal Johnny Morisette said that he and Sam often frequented the Sands nightclub on Figueroa, also confirming that Sam had a penchant for hookers and knew the Hacienda Motel “very, very well.”
Some friends speculate that Lisa Boyer was a prostitute (Bertha Franklin testified that, upon his arrival at the motel, Sam’s tie was loose and his shirttails were hanging out of his pants). According to their version, when Sam went into the motel bathroom, Lisa may have stolen his clothes and made a run for it. When he realized what had happened, a bit drunk, his temper hot, Sam went straight to the motel office, broke down the door, and demanded to see the girl who had fled. Then the fifty-five-year-old manager grabbed her gun
off the TV set and pulled the trigger three times. According to that version, Lisa Boyer probably invented the kidnap/rape story to avoid questions about what happened in the motel room, wantonly leaving Sam Cooke’s reputation supremely and forever tarnished.
Newspaper, TV, and radio reports relayed the cops’ version of the events: that Negro singer Sam Cooke, raging drunk and half naked, had kidnapped and tried to rape twenty-two-year-old Lisa Boyer and was killed in self-defense by the motel manager after he wrestled her to the floor.
Allen Klein told the
Los Angeles Times
that he never accepted Lisa Boyer’s story. “I was prepared to fight, and asked Barbara if she would like me to keep going on it,” he said. “She asked, ‘Will it bring him back? Will it get him out of the room with that woman?’ I told her no. She said, ‘I have two children, and I don’t want to put them through this.’ So the investigation was stopped.” Klein, who later, for a time, managed the Rolling Stones and the Beatles before falling out with both bands, said that he will produce a movie, revealing his theory of how Sam Cooke was killed.
Four months after Bobby Womack married Barbara Cooke, the couple went to Chicago for the wedding of Sam’s niece and were confronted by Sam’s very angry brother Charles. According to the newspapers, there was a heated argument about Sam’s belongings, and somehow Barbara’s gun was produced and Charles used it to pistol-whip the newlyweds. To this day Charles says he has no regrets about the incident. Less than six years later the Womacks divorced, and Barbara is now living very comfortably on Sam’s royalties.
Sam’s old gospel friends feel that Sam was punished for his sinful lifestyle. “When Sam was killed,” said Bobby Womack, “there were those who said, ‘He thought he got away but God waited on him.’ I said, ‘Man, God don’t do people like that—not this kind of God I know. They do it to themselves.’”
Sam Cooke, the soul-stirring preacher’s son, spent his time on earth touching hearts with his voice, creating music that was joyously color-blind. He was a student of black history, a civil rights activist who boldly faced oppression. It’s also said that he succumbed to late-night trysts and temptations, gave in to his “earthly desires,” and wound up paying for it with his life. But after he died, society’s dichotomy between spirituality and sexuality crucified Sam again. A double funeral for a double death.
Despite his tainted reputation, Sam Cooke’s music will live forever. I know in my heart that he has found his place “beyond the sky” and that his Lord has forgiven him, body and soul.
MARVIN GAVE
T
ragically ahead of his time, and locked in a bitter, bloody battle between his shattered soul and his overpowering sexuality, Marvin Gaye spoke to Jesus Christ as if his Savior were hanging out in the studio while he blatantly sang sexual praises: “Let’s Get It On,” “You Sure Love to Ball,” and “Sanctified Pussy” (“Some girls suck/Some don’t dare/Some girls fuck/Some don’t care …”). It seems Madonna and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince have found a way to integrate sex and the soul, but Marvin was tortured and taunted the Lord with his endless wicked transgressions. Jesus said, “It is done unto you as you believe,” and Marvin Gaye believed he was a sinner like no other.
Brought up in a poor area of Washington, D.C., in a very strict, traditional church called the House of God, where his father was a minister, Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr., was singing to Jesus in his high, sweet falsetto at the age of three. Services were often held in the Gay home, where women weren’t allowed to show their arms or their hair, much less wear makeup, nylons, or nail
polish. There was no television set, no movies, no dancing. From Friday night to Sunday morning, the four Gay children were cut off from the rest of the world, expected only to worship the Lord.
I met with Marvin’s younger brother, Frankie, also a beautiful singer—a sensitive, sweet, sad-faced replica of Marvin who has his own recollections. “We knew that being Seventh Day Adventists, we were going to church on the seventh day [Saturday], which to us was the right day, but you have to explain this over and over again to people in order to feel normal. People looked at us as being very abnormal. Marvin and I understood each other, where a lot of people didn’t. We were very close.” I ask Frankie if he sang in church with Marvin. “As children we all had to do something in church. It was one of my father’s rules. Me and Marvin found it better to sing because the rewards were greater. A lot of hugs and ‘Oh, you’re so beautiful!’ We were a dancing, shouting church. Our belief was ‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.’ We used to go to church three or four times a week.” Frankie sighs. “I think too much church for any child will have an effect, and because Father was a minister, we were under ‘What you do reflects on me.’ That always stayed with us. We couldn’t do the things that other people do. What we did reflected on his teachings, his discipline. He was very effective in teaching us right from wrong.”
The fear of God was instilled early, but young Marvin feared his earthly father far more than he feared the one safely tucked away in heaven. Marvin Sr.—“Father”—beat his sons unmercifully for the slightest bit of imagined defiance, while his long-suffering wife, Alberta, spent a lot of time down on her knees, begging God to stop the continuous torment. All the children had bed-wetting problems, and a damp mattress inflamed Father to madness. After insisting that they disrobe, he would whip his naked kids until he could see the welts rise.
Because he was unable to please him, the only attention Marvin could get from his stern, moody Father was negative, so he started to provoke the violence, challenging the older Gay at every turn. But Frankie doesn’t feel Marvin was overly defiant. “I don’t think he rebelled consciously. He was more of a dreamer. It was an unconscious rebellion.” Years later Marvin would insist that Father enjoyed the beatings he doled out and relished the fear he created within his children, saying it was like “living with a very peculiar, changeable, cruel, and all-powerful king.” The Jesus that Father believed in demanded sacrifice that he wasn’t able to give. Marvin Sr. loathed his own weakness and took it out on his family.
Father’s “peculiarity” was that, in private, he enjoyed wearing women’s clothing, often stepping into Alberta’s panties, shoes, gowns, and nylon hose. Sometimes he wore his hair long and wavy, sometimes he wore wigs. He rarely worked, spending most of his time at home while his wife left at five every morning for her job as a domestic. “Among the many sins I got from Father,”
said Marvin, “is a love of loafing.” The neighborhood kids, sensing something strange about the effeminate Gay Sr., called him a sissy, the ultimate insult. But instead of challenging the attackers, young Marvin ran for his life, mortally ashamed. He would later attach an “e” to Gay, but it wouldn’t stop people from adding an “is” in front of his name—“Is Marvin Gaye?” “Man, I can’t tell you,” said Marvin, “how many guys have asked me that.”
In his biography
Divided Soul
by David Ritz, Marvin told the author that his fascination with women’s clothing had been handed down to him. “Sexually, men don’t interest me. But seeing myself as a woman is something that intrigues me. It’s also something I fear. I indulge myself only at the most discreet and intimate moments. Afterward I must bear the guilt and shame for weeks. After all, indulgence of the flesh is wicked, no matter what your kick. The hot stuff is lethal. I’ve never been able to stay away from the hot stuff.”
Motown’s golden boy. An early shot of Marvin Gaye. (MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/VENICE, CALIF.)
For someone who would become such a drooled-over object of desire, Marvin Gaye was an extremely shy teenager who felt devastating guilt about his constant masturbation, likening orgasm to “pleasures of the devil.” When Marvin entered Cardozo High School in 1953, Father was still giving him whippings, throwing him out of the house, threatening to disown him, calling him a “bum.” “I wanted to strike back,” said Marvin, “but where I come from, even to raise your hand to your father is an invitation for him to kill you.” Instead, Marvin’s “unconscious” rebellion increased: He started smoking Viceroy cigarettes and turned to doo-wop music as his deliverance, forming his first group, the D.C. Tones.
Believing school was a waste of time and afraid he would incur the wrath of Father if he failed, Marvin quit after the eleventh grade and joined the Air Force. But he soon found that seeking refuge in the service was a big mistake. Marvin had wanted to learn to fly but instead was stuck peeling potatoes in Kansas. He felt betrayed by his country and thought his superiors were “pompous assholes.” Coupled with an almost lethal lack of self-confidence was Marvin’s massive ego. He had huge dreams of stardom—of becoming the black Sinatra—and just wasn’t capable of taking orders. He faked crazy for a few months and finally got an honorable discharge (“Marvin Gay cannot adjust
to regimentation and authority”). When I ask Frankie if Marvin’s troubles in the service led to his hatred of Uncle Sam, he balks. “I think ‘hate’ is very strong. My father taught us not to use that word. You can disagree with the government in certain areas, but I don’t think Marvin felt that this wasn’t the greatest country in the world, as far as opportunity.” Then Frankie admits, “Marvin did say, ‘It makes you want to holler, throw up both your hands.’”
Marvin would later say that the only good thing that happened during his stint in the service was that he finally got laid. He had crude sex with a disinterested, obese cathouse hooker, which triggered a lifetime of similar tawdry encounters. In a 1982 interview with the French magazine
Actuel,
he admitted to “needing” prostitutes: “Prostitutes protect me from passion. Passions are dangerous. They cause you to lust after other men’s wives.”
After his air force discharge, Marvin feared facing Father and crashed on friends’ couches, plotting his music career. Along with Reese Palmer, James Nolan, and Chester Simmons, he started the Marquees, a doo-wop group that Marvin claims was named after the Marquis de Sade. “I identified with his wicked ways,” he said. “He had a power to raise the blood pressure.”
The Marquees played local dances and school assemblies, where Marvin’s shy sensuality drove the girls wild. “My singing covered up for the action I wasn’t getting,” he admitted. “I saw that I was reaching for girls on a mystical level. Almost like I was one of them.” The Marquees were eventually brought to the attention of rhythm-and-blues pioneer Bo Diddley, who produced their first record. When “Hey Little Schoolgirl” failed to chart, Marvin got work as a stockboy and then as a dishwasher at People’s Drugstore, an establishment that catered to whites only. Every day the black Sinatra had to eat his sack lunch out on a park bench.
Through Bo Diddley, Marvin met a man he would later call his mentor, singer/songwriter Harvey Fuqua, who was quick to spot Marvin’s steamy potential. In 1959 nineteen-year-old Marvin headed for Chicago with the latest version of Harvey and the Moonglows, where they were soon recording for legendary Chess Records. None of the songs were hits, but Marvin got his first big dose of the road, hitting the “chitlin circuit” (chitlins—pigs’ intestines—being the cheapest meat), with Big Joe Turner and Etta James, being refused accommodations, sleeping in a station wagon or outside on the “cold, hard ground.” “Ran into all kinds of racist shit,” Marvin said. “I thought about Joseph and Mary being turned away, but that wasn’t comfort enough. Jesus turned over the tables in the temple, and I was ready to break down the doors.” In the summer of 1960 the Moonglows played to a packed house in D.C. Marvin didn’t even know if Father was in the audience.
Harvey Fuqua shared the dream that, with his easygoing, alluring charm, Marvin could become a successful crooner, and after the doo-wop craze died down, they hit Detroit and quickly linked up with Berry Gordy and Motown
Records. “As soon as Berry saw how big my talent was, he made a bid,” Marvin declared, “and that was it.” When his contract was sold to Motown, he thought he had landed on Easy Street in Motor City, but soon realized he was just another struggling employee in a large stable of talented musicians.
A determined and shrewd businessman, Berry Gordy had started his Motown venture with the royalties earned from Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops,” turning it into the largest black-owned enterprise in the history of American business: “The Sound of Young America.” His employees were paid a very low wage, the royalty rates were much lower than elsewhere in the industry, and Gordy kept the copyrights to the songs written by his musicians, but despite everybody jockeying for position, he somehow created a tight, family feel. Marvin, of course, wanted to get closer to his boss, and because of Gordy’s longtime friendship with Smokey Robinson, Marvin began his Motown career playing drums for the Miracles, making five dollars a session. In early 1961 Motown had its first million-seller, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “Shop Around.”
At twenty Marvin began a love affair with Berry Gordy’s thirty-seven-year-old sister, Anna, and a lot of people saw it as a calculated attempt to cut in front of the long line at Motown’s recording studio. Even if there is some truth to this, Marvin found Anna to be an adoring partner, a wise and worldly teacher who encouraged and inspired him in his pursuit of stardom. The two married in 1961, and Anna called good-looking Marvin her “fine young thing.” “We were hot characters,” said Marvin, “with hot ambitions.” Hoping to slide into the white pop market, with Anna’s help, Marvin did get into the studio to record his first album,
The Soulful Mood of Marvin Gaye.
But when the record failed to cause any kind of stir, he was plagued with self-doubt and full of resentment that he needed anybody’s help. Outwardly calm, suave, and impeccably cool, Marvin seethed with the pent-up desire to succeed. He watched his boss, Berry Gordy, the international playboy, seemingly on top of the glitzy world, and wanted to run his
own
empire, move people around like so many chess pieces. He called Motown “the gestapo,” but added that since Berry was “a loving cat,” it was a loving gestapo. Marvin Gaye wanted to fit in, but he couldn’t help but stand out.
Marvin recorded six more albums that didn’t sell, which kicked his pumped-up delicate ego into a private rage. He slogged around the country as part of a Motown package with Mary Wells, the Supremes, the Marvelettes, and “Little” Stevie Wonder, making sixty dollars a week. He continued to play sessions, but when he started writing, Marvin got his first taste of victory with “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” in 1962 and “Hitch Hike” in 1963, followed by his first crossover hit, “Pride and Joy,” written for Anna. But instead of enjoying his hard-earned good fortune, Marvin worried about it being snatched away from him and was in a constant state of angst.
Hit followed hit, and Marvin bought his parents a large, comfortable home in a good neighborhood. He was proud that his mother no longer had to work, but his visits were infrequent. He didn’t want to be reminded of his unhappy childhood, and although Marvin ached for his father’s approval, he couldn’t stand to be around him.
In 1964 “How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You),” another declaration of love to Anna, went to number six on the charts, but Marvin wouldn’t be satisfied until he got to number one. That same year he headlined the Motor-town Revue and recorded
Together
with Mary Wells, the first of many successful duet albums. Clean-cut and boyish, Marvin sang directly to his fans, and they imagined being wrapped up in his arms. More than a few had their wish come true.
BOOK: Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon
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