Bobby Womack

It took me a while to get to Bobby Womack.



From jazz to soul/funk artists and groups, I was finding covers of Bobby Womack songs on the 1970s albums I'd get my hands on.



Both Rufus featuring Chaka Khan & Lou Donaldson had covers of You're Welcome, Stop on By on their minds to have recorded their versions of the song.

There was a record store on St. Laurent BLVD that allowed you to rent CD's from a very limited stock. There was a Bobby Womack compilation among their choices and after hearing the first song I literally and figuratively asked What Is This?

He had a vocal quality comparable to Wilson Pickett and James Brown but gruffer and rougher.  Ironically he wrote dozens of songs for Wilson Pickett in the mid-late 1960s.  



During one of my most bittersweet trips to New York a few years ago, I was roaming the streets and stumbled across a book/record store.  I used the former first because I didn't know they sold records until I walked in.  I bought the Bobby Womack Greatest Hits album above among a handful of others.  I was disappointed it didn't have What Is This, Across 110th Street or It's All Over Now but was more than happy with the rest of the track listing.    



I bought The Soul Years CD days ago around the time I started this rough draft about Bobby Womack.  On June 28, 2014, I complete this draft on the day Womack died.  R.I.P.