| William
Lorenzo Robinson, better known as "Weepin' Willie," was born in Atlanta,
Georgia, July 6, 1926. His early years were mostly spent outdoors in the
fields of Winter Garden and Belglade, Florida, under a humid and unyielding
sun picking tomatoes, potatoes, beans, and assorted crops. After his mother
died when he was 10, Willie and his father migrated with the harvest seasons
in a canvas-covered truck, driving from Florida through the Carolinas to
Virginia. Throughout this time while he traveled on the muddied back roads
and labored in the fields, Willie knew there had to be some other way to
make a living. "I didn't like this. It was too hard," he said. On one trip
to Cheapside, Va., Willie's father had arranged to have him and a family
friend head further north to Trenton, N.J. "My father said he'd join up
with me in a few weeks. But I haven't seen him since," he said. "I was
just a kid, 15." He went to work on a Trenton farm milking cows, driving
tractor and truck, performing the usual chores of the day. "I got sick
of picking potatoes and the rest, so they let me drive the truck. It was
better than picking," he said. After a year or so, he moved into the city
and became a dishwasher. When he was 17 though, he enlisted in the Army.
Willie recounts, "I told them I was 18, but I was really 17 ... In the
Army they told me to listen up and pay attention, because if you don't
pay attention you'll have to take basic training all over again and not
get a chance to go overseas. So, I didn't pay attention and I didn't go
overseas. I wasn't mad at nobody." |
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| After
three years in the service, Willie met a friend who booked bands in Trenton,
and he started working as master of ceremonies in a nightclub. The club
booked such luminaries as B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Jackie Wilson,
and Little Richard. While King, Bland, Wilson, and Richard carried their
own MC, Willie was the house MC who'd tell jokes, dance, sing, and generally
warm up the people before the main performers came out. "I got to know
a lot of people personally this way, B.B., Bobby Bland, Big Joe Turner,
they all came through." When Willie first started MC-ing in Trenton, the
owner said that he needed to change his name. They first tried Willie the
Weeper, but that didn't really fit. So Willie shortened it to Weepin' Willie,
and has been ever since. B.B. King was most responsible for the development
of Willie as an entertainer. B.B. told him that if he wanted to sing, "then
just sing. The rest will take care of itself." "But I don't know any songs
except your songs," Willie told B.B. one night. "Then sing 'em," B.B. said.
"So I got up there with his 21-piece band behind me ... Now I've never
been around anything more than four pieces in my life, and I didn't know
nothing from a hole in the ground. But I was lucky. B.B. said, 'That's
all right. Keep on singing. Learn one song. Then learn two, and so on.
Learn enough songs to where five people will like you. Maybe after a while
30 people will like you. Just keep on going. That's how I started out.'
" B.B. also advised him to always sing so that women will like you. "Because
if you sing to the women, the men will always follow," he said. "Do what
you can do the best you can do, and after that you ain't got no control
over it." "Well I must have done all right because no one ever asked for
their money back whenever I sang. I never had any formal lessons or anything
like that. I just sing what I feel," Willie said. "I never say that I worked
for B.B. King or Jackie Wilson or anyone else. I tell people that I worked
on stage with them. And I worked with a lot of people -- Jimmy Reed, Chuck
Jackson, Otis Redding, Joe Tex, and Solomon Burke. Solomon is one of them
stars who never really shined, but he was there all along the way," he
said. In 1959, a young woman from Louie's Lounge in Roxbury came to Trenton
and asked Willie, "I like your band, do you want to go to Boston?" "Yeah,
we'll go to Boston," he told her. "And we've been here ever since." Willie
worked at Louie's Lounge as the house MC for several years and fronted
the house band. "That's where it was happening -- Roxbury -- in those days.
It was hot. All the players came through there." He then worked at Basin
Street South as assistant manager for a few years, and then moved over
to the Peppermint Lounge. Around the corner from the Peppermint was the
Golden Nugget and the Palace, nightspots that jumped every night of the
week. This was about 1962-3. In 1964, Tommy Hunt, author of the then mega-hit
song "Human," hired Willie as his MC and entertainer at the Ebb Tide. "When
I come on, I want the stage hot," Hunt told Willie. "If it's not hot, then
you're fired." So it was up to Willie and a man called Herky, who was known
as the Monkey Man because of his ape schtick, to whip up the crowd for
Hunt. "We stayed on the stage and had to keep moving all the time. If he
looked over and saw we weren't moving, he'd fine us $10. Sometimes he'd
play for two hours straight and we'd have to be up there moving with him
the whole time. I used to say, 'Oh, my God this guy is going to kill me.'
But he paid good money. The money I make now is what I was making then."
When Hunt was on, he was a good entertainer. But he had a reputation as
a fickle performer, one who often feigned himself sick if he didn't want
to work on a particular night. Willie said he did have a slight heart attack
one time, but after he recovered it became a favorite excuse to duck gigs
which he didn't like. "I figured I'm not going anywhere with this guy,"
Willie said. "But he paid good, I'll say that about him." Hunt eventually
moved his entire band to England, where he still resides, and raised a
family and did pretty well for himself. Still a migrant in the musical
world, Willie then worked at Club New Orleans in Boston's Combat Zone on
LaGrange Street. Then he moved to play at Jacob Wirth on Stuart. That's
when guitarist Buddy Johnson joined Willie's band, forming an association
as The Buddy Johnson/Weepin' Willie or the Weepin' Willie/Buddy Johnson
All Star band. By this time, his experience as a showman was evident to
every nightclub owner, and it seemed everyone in Boston knew Weepin' Willie
as a class act. Other jobs included the International Lounge, Ben's Lounge,
and performances at just about every watering hole in and around the city.
(Buddy Johnson died in May 1998.) Willie's charismatic personality takes
over when he's on stage, a commanding presence that brings immediacy to
his audience. "They like that one-on-one contact. They can feel it, and
that's what he brings to every show," according to Peter Lembo, Willie's
former manager. "I call him the Dean Martin of the blues. Martin wasn't
the greatest singer in the world but he had that personality that could
bring a song across." "I never called myself a singer," Willie said. "To
me, I'm just entertaining. Whatever I do, people seem to like it. I can't
sing like nobody else, I just sing like me." Willie says that in addition
to singing, he was quite the dancer in his day. "I don't look like it,
but I can dance too. Back then I could run through the house singing and
dancing. But now, forget it." In looking back over his career as an entertainer,
Willie said he'd like to be remembered as someone who "did what I liked
to do and somewhere along the line I hope someone liked what I'd done.
If you like what you're doing, just hang in there. I never worried about
no big money. I never did it for the money, I just did it cause I liked
it." |
