Traveling Soul (10 page)

It was heady stuff, but the Impressions got a much different reception than expected from Detroit's white show business professionals. “We were treated like a bunch of kids, young kids at that,” Jerry said. “In the black community [in Chicago], despite our youth, we were treated with respect, like heroes. To black people, young and old alike, we had grasped that elusive thing called success, and, if only for a moment, we symbolized their dreams and aspirations. Black males, for example, saw us as symbols of hope. Black females saw us as suave, worldly guys who had gone places, done things. We were special.” In Detroit, they were just another act.

The trip took them down another peg before it ended. Famous Detroit DJ Larry Dixon sweet-talked the Impressions, telling them how good their record sounded and how Abner would get them on Ed Sullivan's show. Then, he sprung the trap. He promoted a concert every Saturday, he said, and if the Impressions would perform there—just a song or two—it would help their sales in Detroit. They explained that they had scheduled an appearance on
Bandstand Matinee
back in Chicago. “Don't worry,” Dixon said. “I'll call Abner on Friday and straighten it out. It's ridiculous to spend the money to come here and not get all the publicity you can out of this town.” All day Friday, WCHB played “For Your Precious Love” once or twice every hour. Late Friday night, Dixon called to say he had spoken with Abner and worked everything out.

Around seven o'clock Saturday evening, the Impressions arrived at the club, where people already stood in line waiting to get inside. The full force of the house band hit the crowd as it cascaded in. The band showed up too late to rehearse the Impressions' material—the first sign something was about to go wrong.

Close to nine o'clock, Dixon appeared “dressed like some fairytale prince.” He walked to the bandstand and shouted, “It's show time!” After the house band played a few more songs, Dixon introduced Eddie Holland, who sang Jackie Wilson's “Reet Petite” with mesmerizing accuracy, down to every nuance of Wilson's routine. Holland would soon cowrite some of the biggest hits in popular music history at Motown, the label run by “Reet Petite” cowriter Berry Gordy.

After Holland finished, Larry started his rap: “Ladies and gentlemen … all the way from Chicago, Illinois … five young men who have the hottest record in WCHB land! The creators of the monster hit ‘For Your Precious Love' … Here they are … our special guest attraction tonight … Jerry Butler and the Impressions!” The crowd erupted in cheers.

As the Impressions performed, electric energy pounded through their veins. The audience carried them on a wave of ecstasy that felt downright holy. “I got the same feeling that night that I had experienced with the Northern Jubilee Singers when the church was with us,” Jerry said. “It's a feeling of pushing up to your limit and then over, and your
spirit lifts your body. It all becomes so real that it's unreal. We finished, and the audience applauded and screamed. ‘More! More! More!' We had two encores, singing the same song. After the third time, Larry got us off. Afterwards, there were young, pretty women with pieces of paper wanting autographs, fat ladies with big bosoms and whiskey on their breath wanting to hug and kiss us, and the boyfriends and husbands of these women wanting to kick our asses.”

It is no secret that many insecure people find themselves drawn to the stage. The attention, spotlight, and applause help ease the pain of their insecurity and replace it with an often-fleeting sense of self-worth. My father was one such person. He knew a few things about how women treated performers, but the crowd's reaction in Detroit was something else. Standing on that stage, he felt powerful and confident, maybe for the first time in his life.

The stage offered him more than just sex and self-worth, though. As the crowd went wild in Detroit, he saw a way out of the constant hardship that had plagued him and his family throughout his life. The stage legitimized him. It raised his social status. It gave him the power to do what his father couldn't or wouldn't do—take care of his mother and siblings.

It did another thing as well. As a loner, he had few close friends. The stage provided him support, adulation, and maybe even love. At the same time, it let him control those things. He could protect his insecurities by choosing how close he let others get. This didn't always work in his favor when it came to personal relationships, especially romantic ones. But in that moment, it all seemed too good to be true. Until the end of the night.

Coming down from the performance high, the Impressions realized that Dixon had disappeared with the $3,000 made at the door without offering them a cent—he “didn't even buy us a hamburger,” Jerry said. Worse yet, when they slunk back to Chicago, a furious Abner chewed them out for missing
Bandstand Matinee
. They tried to explain, but Abner didn't want to hear it. Of course he never authorized their extended stay in Detroit. They'd been duped, exploited, and taught a hard lesson about
show business. My father catalogued these disappointments. He hated someone taking advantage of him, and he studied ways to make sure it didn't happen again.

Back in Chicago before the next tour began, the Impressions played several of Herb Kent's sock hops. “Curtis was so broke in those days, his guitar didn't even have a back,” Kent said. “Whenever you saw him, he was always facing you, because he didn't want people to see the back of that guitar.”

Curtis might have been broke, but it didn't break him down. He spent most nights on the run, crashing either with friends or at Annie Bell's. Staying with Annie Bell, however, meant submerging deeper into Spiritualist traditions. Before the Impressions left for Philadelphia, Annie Bell asked them to see a healer named Mrs. Washington and receive her blessing. “Mrs. Washington was a very hip old lady and we did it more out of respect for her than from the belief that it would do any good,” Jerry said.

The little old lady prayed with the group, blessed some water in the name of God, and sprinkled it on Sam, Arthur, and Richard. Something changed when she got to my father and Jerry. She flung the rest of the water in their faces, ending the spectacle by throwing the cup at Jerry's face. On the way out, my father muttered, “She sure did bless the hell out of us, didn't she, man?” For all his soft-spoken seriousness, Dad always had a cutting, wry sense of humor.

With Mrs. Washington's odd blessing, and three St. Christopher medals hung around their necks to ward off evil spirits, the Impressions prepared for their longest promotional tour yet. They piled into their green Mercury station wagon—a gift from Vee-Jay—and set off to perform for the famous Philadelphia DJ Georgie Woods.

Woods had a special power to break records. He served as Dick Clark's inside man, alerting Clark to Negro music worth featuring on
American Bandstand
. In such a way, Woods formed a link between race records and the mainstream pop market. Impressing him was crucial.

Unfortunately, the Impressions' first show at Philly's Uptown Theater suffered immediate trouble. That night, they replaced Ed Townsend, who had just had a huge hit with a doo-wop ballad called “For Your Love.” Townsend, who would later write for the Impressions, had become an overnight sensation. When Woods announced that Townsend wouldn't perform, the crowd responded with thundering boos. The Impressions stood backstage trembling with fear. They hadn't rehearsed with the orchestra because the show was in progress when they arrived. They had no arranger, which meant they had no lead sheets for the band. On top of that, the crowd was now furious.

As boos rained down, Woods yelled into the microphone, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! When I tell you who's replacing Ed, you'll know you're in for a treat. These guys have a new record called ‘For Your Precious Love.'” Just like that, the crowd turned. Girls started screaming. It seemed there was no problem a hit song couldn't fix.

While in Philadelphia, the group stayed in a rooming house on North Broad Street called Mom's, along with other acts on the show like Mickey and Sylvia, Lee Andrews and the Hearts, Huey Smith and the Clowns, Robert and Johnny, and Patti LaBelle. Mom's served as a second home for most of the acts playing the Uptown Theater—even in the North, they had to lodge on the outskirts of town with other Negroes who made a living housing traveling performers. Within a few years, Woods would use his shows at the Uptown Theater to promote civil rights. He'd even receive an award from the NAACP in 1963. His voice was so strong in the Negro community, he helped disperse the Philadelphia race riots that occurred near the theater in 1964. But, for now, the unwritten rules that forced people like my father to stay in dingy boarding houses and people like Woods to limit their career aspirations to “race” music still stuck firmly in place.

Not even oppression dampened the Impressions' spirits, however. They were young, relatively famous, and making more money than they ever imagined. Plus, the camaraderie among the artists turned even the
harshest situation into a chance for fun. “We used to play tricks on one another,” LaBelle said. “Like the time we were performing with the Impressions at the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia. We stuffed their shirts with paper and filled their shoes with water. But they paid us back. At the end of the engagement, Jerry, Curtis, and Sam came to our dressing room and sang ‘Goodnight Sweetheart' in wonderful harmony. We were touched. When they finished, as we hugged them goodbye, they stuck us with pins!”

Practical jokes aside, the Impressions finished the week at the Uptown Theater, picked up their money, and prepared for the biggest engagement of their lives. Next stop, Harlem.

This was it. The world-famous Apollo Theater. Mecca and Nirvana wrapped in one for the Negro performer. Mount Rushmore, even—an eternal badge of success. It made everything else look rural. And yet, upon arriving, the mood soured when they saw the billing on the marquee. The Apollo marquee was, after all, a hallowed place. Night and day, it sparkled like a diamond alerting all of Harlem, which meant the world, that the names in bold black were worth something. It once held the consecrated names of John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Josephine Baker, Billie Holliday, and Joe Louis. Like every Negro performer, my father dreamed of seeing his name in those lights, and his chance had finally come.

Only, he didn't see it. Right there on that sacred marquee, the name “Jerry Butler” loomed in giant letters over the much smaller “and the Impressions.” Once again, the rest of the group had been cast as also-rans, bruising their barely healed egos. They threatened to walk out, and they might have done it had Abner not flown in and repeated the speech he made in Chicago. Still, passions ran high. Jerry said, “I felt like a stranger among guys who were my friends.”

Strangers or not, the Impressions had a weeklong gig to get through, and they had reached the pinnacle of Negro entertainment, no matter how the billing read. Before the first show, Dad waited nervously back-
stage as the promoter, Harlem DJ Jocko Henderson, warmed up the crowd. “Jocko was number one in Harlem,” Jerry said. “He had his own television show and everything. He was famous for his so-called ‘Rocket Ship Show' on the radio and a rap that goes like this: ‘Eeeh tiddy yock. This is the jock. Back on the scene with my record machine saying, ooh pooh pah dooo. And a how do you do? We got good music just for you. Mommio and Daddio, this is Jocko with the rocket ship show, get up you big bad motor scooter'n lets go!'”