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With Cecil Womack having sadly died last month (in South Africa, coincendentally) and Bobby Womack's profile at the highest it's been for years (his The Bravest Man In The Universe
was probably my favorite album of 2012) it seems fitting to start this post by clarifying the family relationships: Bobby and Cecil were brothers, so Linda Womack was Bobby's sister-in-law and also his former stepdaughter via his marriage to Sam Cooke's widow. I believe they also had an affair at one point.All this complexity seems to have provided some inspiration for the duo's first big hit, a brilliant piece of pop-funk that combines a big chorus with some dark moments in the lyric ("I promise to stop boxing you up, so don't scratch my face"). You can make your own judgement as to how positive the song really is, and how likely the protagonists ever are to make things better but it's hopeful and delivers more grit than most soul music of this era. Maybe it's slightly too slow to be danceable, and the full six-minute album version that's now available on CD is a trifle overlong, but this is extraordinarily catchy and driven by C. Womack's excellent bass playing. There's even a nice singalong moment with the title sung by a pseudo-choir at the start and various other points throughout the song. One of the lost classics of the Now series, I think.
Also appearing on: Now 13
Available on: Love Wars
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