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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