The guitar string that a shoelace could not save

Bobby Womack grew up in a poor Cleveland household, the third of five sons. His father, a steelworker and part-time minister, forbade the boys to touch his guitar. One night eight-year-old Bobby broke a string and replaced it with a shoelace. Caught, he was offered the chance to play for his father instead of facing a whipping, and he played so well that his father was in shock. Soon afterwards, every son got a guitar. Bobby, who was left-handed, simply flipped it upside-down.

By the mid-1950s he was touring the Midwest gospel circuit with his brothers as The Womack Brothers. Sam Cooke, lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, saw them, became their mentor and helped them tour. Bobby's gruff baritone contrasted with his brother Curtis's smoother tenor. At sixteen he dropped out of high school.

In 1961 Cooke signed the brothers to his SAR Records, renamed them the Valentinos, moved them to Los Angeles and pushed them from gospel towards secular soul. They wrote “It's All Over Now”, a song that later became the Rolling Stones' first UK number one. Womack also worked as Cooke's backing guitarist.

His solo catalogue is wide: “Lookin' for a Love”, “That's the Way I Feel About Cha”, “Woman's Gotta Have It”, “Harry Hippie” and “Across 110th Street”, plus 1980s hits such as “If You Think You're Lonely Now”. He also wrote “I Can Understand It” for New Birth. His recording of “California Dreamin'” belongs to the same long catalogue.

Womack's career spanned more than 60 years and styles from gospel and blues to funk and soul. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 and died in 2014. His mother once told him he could sing his way out of the ghetto, and he did.