I am not good enough.”īut it just so happened that I was cutting a record for Tommy Hunt, who was a heartthrob. When Jackie walked out, he had a swagger that made women go crazy. Now here I come, five-foot-five-Jackie was about six feet-plus I had a rattle in my voice. I am not going out there.” There were women throwing their panties on stage for Jackie Wilson. I’d never had one thousand dollars at one time at that point. On the third day, when it came time to get paid, they called me out in the hallway and handed me four grand. It was a three-day gig, and they were paying me $5,000 a night. So they got me a gig opening up for Jackie at the Brevoort Theatre in Brooklyn. But if they don’t like you, you’re fucked. One thing about gangsters, if they like you, they’ll pay you. At the time my records were being distributed by gangsters-it was Morris Levy, who owned Roulette Records. Black artists wanted that, but nobody was giving it to us.īy the time Jackie became a star, my little record called “ Baby, You’re My Everything” was out, and they had me opening up for him.

The Drifters were the first Black act to have strings on their records. It was like strings were for white records when you were trying to go into the white idiom, they’d put strings on your record. In those days, they didn’t use strings on Black records. He had one called “Sleep” that had strings. Little Willie John’s voice was fantastic. Naturally somebody, and I was one of them, would fart in the trunk. We’d drive up and park somewhere obscure, and they’d let us out. Then there would be a couple of girls in the car. My best friend had a ’49 Ford, and about four of us would get in the trunk. If it was a big artist like him, in the mid ’60s, it was 99 cents to get in. I remember he played Sunset Lake Park, which was the Black beach. Everywhere you’d go-if you went to the dances at the YMCA, if you turned on the radio-they were playing Little Willie John.

Swamp song country