Top 40 Entry 1/8/72: Bobby Womack - "That's the Way I Feel About Cha"

 

Bobby Womack—“That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” *  United Artists 50847 * Top 40 debut: 1/8/72 * Written by Jimmy Grisby, Joe Hicks, and Bobby Womack * Produced by Free Prods. and Muscle Shoals Sound * 45: "That's the Way I Feel About Cha" / "Come L'Amore" * LP: Communication * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#27); Billboard Hot Soul Singles (#2)

“That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” was the first Top 40 hit for influential R&B singer-songwriter Bobby Womack, whose career began in the late fifties when his brothers and father formed the Womack Brothers, a gospel group. Sam Cooke signed them to his SAR label, then secularized them as the Valentinos, under which name they recorded classics like “It’s All Over Now” and “Lookin’ for a Love,” all of them showcasing Bobby's lead vocals. (The group would also go by The Lovers a short while after).  

Possessing an expressive, gravelly voice that earned him his nickname of "The Preacher,” Womack made for an authoritative front man, who also toured with Cooke as a guitarist. Career trouble came for Womack after Cooke's death in 1964, though, when he showed up to the funeral dressed in one of Cooke’s suits, arm-in-arm with his widow, Barbara. "Sam would want it this way," she told Jet magazine after their marriage in early 1965. Radio was slow to reward Womack with much airplay after this, bumping him down toward work as a session player and songwriter during the late sixties.

He actually did chart four times during those years, but never made it to the Top 40. The classic “Fly Me to the Moon” was among these singles—he’d also write four hits for Wilson Pickett, including the Top 40 “I’m a Midnight Mover” (1968) and “I’m in Love” (1967). After his divorce with Barbara in 1970, the past seemed behind him enough for a solo career revamp. A new United Artists contract brought forth a new album called Communication in late 1971, and a track called “That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” reached #27 on the pop chart and #2 on what was then called the Hot Soul Singles chart. (The track would be the first of eleven Top Ten R&B hits for Womack.)  

The single captures Womack with a sense of renewed conviction, declaring in the opening recitation that “everybody wants love, but everybody’s afraid of love,” and later rebuking his woman for interpreting his own love “as a sign of weakness.” “That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” was the only charting hit from Communication, a dynamic statement album even with its surprising covers of such contemporary hits as “Fire and Rain,” “Everything is Beautiful,” and "Close to You." It's on "Close to You" where he delivers one of the era's great music biz disses, explaining in the recitation where he can't seem to catch a break at any level for not being commercial enough on one hand, or funky enough on the other. Then he hurtles into the most soulful rendition imaginable of the most commercial song imaginable.

The single's B-side, "Come L'Amour," features the background vocals of future blaxploitation star Pam Grier, who was working as an honest-to-goodness session singer at the time. Womack's next Top 40 hit would arrive in early ’73, with “Hairy Hippie.” 

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Top 40 Entry 1/8/72: Redbone - "The Witch Queen of New Orleans"

                                  

Redbone—“The Witch Queen of New Orleans” * Epic 10749 * Top 40 debut: 1/8/72 * Peak date: 2/9/72 * Written by Pat Vegas and Lolly Vegas * Produced by Lolly Vegas, Pat Vegas, and Pete Welding * B-side: “Chant: 13th Hour" (single edit) * LP: Message from a Drum * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#21)

Their chart history was short, but Redbone are remembered for their funky, chugging brand of “swamp rock” (shorthand for sounds associated with Louisiana), and also for the Native American regalia they’d wear on stage. All of the members had roots in multiple nations, with band leaders Pat and Lolly Vazquez coming from Shoshone, Yaqui, and Papago (alongside Chicano) bloodlines. The brothers changed their last name to Vegas after relocating from Fresno to Los Angeles, where they played in the Shindig house band, appeared in the 1967 film It’s a Bikini World, released an album called Pat and Lolly Vegas at the Haunted House (1966), and rubbed shoulders with scenesters like Jimi Hendrix, who encouraged them to embrace their heritage. 

Like fellow California rock ‘n’ rollers Creedence Clearwater Revival, the brothers also had a fixation on Cajun culture. Their friend Jim Ford, a New Orleanian who’d moved to L.A., helped them write a song called “Niki Hoeky” in 1967, which was full of inspired, lyrical nonsense with linguistic believability. P.J. Proby and Bobbie Gentry, among others, recorded versions of it, and the brothers would incorporate Cajun flavors into their next project. They called it Redbone, a Cajun slang term they’d come across referring to mixed-race ancestry, and their 1970 self-titled debut album (a two-record set) included a track called “Crazy Cajun Cakewalk” (the leadoff track), their own version of “Niki Hoeky,” and “Danse Calinda,” a term borrowed from an exotic track on Dr. John’s Gris-Gris (1968) album. 

Before 1970 was done, they released a follow-up album called Potlatch (a Chinook term for a kind of feast), which amped up their Native American associations. It depicted them in headbands, framed by indigenous embroidery, and included songs with powwow chants, rhythms, and topics. Their song “Alcatraz” paid tribute to the takeover by Indians of All Tribes (IOAT) that would last until the following summer. “Maggie,” though, evoked “Niki Hoeky” with more Cajun-sounding mystery phrases as they sung about an ill-fated enchantress. It also showcased the signature sound of Lolly Vegas’s guitar running through a rotating Leslie speaker, normally the vehicle of a Hammond organ. 

Their 1971 Message from a Drum album had a striking cover with open sky, horses, and tepees, and I wish I could figure out its origins. It’s credited to Ed Lee, the house designer at Epic, but I’m guessing he didn’t actually paint it. This is the album that includes Redbone’s first Top 40 hit, “The Witch Queen of New Orleans,” in which they sharpen the focus on their “Niki Hoeky” and “Maggie” stories and find a true historical figure in Marie Laveau, the 19th century voodoo queen of New Orleans legend. Other than a 1954 “Minnie the Moocher”-type track by Papa Celestin, the famous witch hadn’t appeared in much popular music other than an instrumental by Canned Heat, before Redbone got to her. “Marie, Marie, La-voodoo-veau,” they chanted over menacing bowed guitars, casting spells of their own. What to make of this early seventies “season of the witch” (using Donovan’s words from a few years earlier)? Santana had a hit with “Black Magic Woman” in 1970, the German group the Rattlers charted with “The Witch,” and Doctor Hook and Bobby Bare would both record versions of Shel Silverstein’s “Marie LaVeau,” with Bare’s making the charts. And then came Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon.” 

Redbone's next album (Already Here, released in 1972) had cover art showing the band’s faces lined up behind a spiritual leader figure, while the back showed them in war paint, and it included one last overtly Cajun track called “Fais-Do.” The next album came out the following year and took the name of Wovoka, the Ghost Dance movement leader who had inspired the occupation at Wounded Knee earlier in 1973. The album was supposed to contain a song called “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee,” but Epic refused to include it on the album, prompting Redbone to press their own singles. They hauled them along on their European tour, and sent it to the top of the Dutch and Belgian charts. 

The big story of Wovoka, of course, was “Come and Get Your Love,” the joyous single that reached number 5 in the U.S. in 1974 and has become a media usage staple. It retains symbolic significance in the story of early seventies formatting in the sense that it drew the curtains, with smiles and reassurance, on an band that had been decidedly activist and musically diverse up to then. 

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