Born March 4th, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio, Bobby grew up listening to gospel, country and R&B music. While his father was off at work, Bobby would slip his guitar out of its case and try to learn it by ear, resulting in his unique “left-handed and upside-down” style of play. In the mid-1950s, he and his four brothers formed the Womack Brothers, a singing group that became quite popular on the local gospel circuit. In 1961, they were enticed to move to Los Angeles by Sam Cooke, who changed their name to the Valentinos and asked them to record some pop material for his new label, S.A.R. Records. Two singles, 1962’s “Lookin’ For A Love” and 1964’s “It’s All Over Now” (later covered by the J. Geils Band and the Rolling Stones, respectively) fared well on the R&B charts, and Sam eventually hired Bobby to play guitar in his touring band.

Bobby went solo after Cooke’s death, but his marriage to Cooke’s widow scandalized the black music community and almost ruined his career. Since he couldn’t get his own records played, he kept afloat by playing on other artists’ records and writing songs for Wilson Pickett. He finally broke through in the early 1970s with a succession of hits, including “That’s The Way I Feel About ‘Cha,” “Woman’s Gotta Have It” and “Harry Hippie.” In 1973, he wrote and recorded the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Across 110th Street, and he scored a Top 10 pop hit in 1974 with a remake of “Lookin’ For a Love.” Since then, his career has been marked by a series of ups and downs, both personal and commercial, but he’s still respected throughout the world as one of the greatest living soul singers.

Though Bobby’s not a blues singer by definition, "Do Anything For U," an emotional track recorded exclusively for BluesBLITZ, reveals that blues idioms are still very much alive and well in the context of modern R&B. Bobby sings over a simple chord progression and a solid slow-jam groove, pleading with all the sweetness of Sam Cooke, then testifying with all the grittiness of Wilson Pickett. If you dig old-school Womack – or old-school soul, in general – you’re gonna like this a lot.

-- Dan Epstein

Dan Epstein is a Los Angeles-based journalist and pop-culture historian whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, BAM, Raygun, Guitar World and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. His first book, Twentieth Century Pop Culture, was published in 1999 by Carlton Books.