Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend

to hide. During this time I lost my case against Bob Crewe in the Supreme Court of New York State. I was also in federal bankruptcy court in Detroit. But the most damaging was my appearance in divorce court against Susan.
    Prior to these events becoming final, I looked for a way out of my financial problems. Susan and I were still living in our beloved house when I befriended one of my local promotion men, Larry Benjamin. As the money slowed to a trickle, I went to Larry for help. I wanted to know if there was anyone in Detroit who might serve as my manager, since I was terrified by the notion of being in New York. He said he did and made an appointment for me to meet Barry Kramer, whom you’ll soon learn more about.
    Months before this occurred I made up a prospectus to try to get local moneymen to invest in my own production company. I had taken on a partner named Sammy Kaplan, but Sammy, unbeknownst to me, was not considered a good risk by the moneymen and the deal fell flat.
    There were no jobs, there was no money, and collection people were calling all the time. My fame bought me some breathing room but without a solution to the unpaid bills, time was running short. I insisted that Susan give me a divorce. She did not understand why. In truth, neither did I, except a selfish, unloving survival notion told me I could not support a family. I lied to her and told her I was no longer attracted to her. And, I admitted that I had been steadily unfaithful. I told her whatever I had to, to make her angry enough to give me the divorce. Our son Joel had just begun to walk. My God, what was I doing?
    I look back and try to justify my abandonment of my family by pointing to the absence of love in my childhood, but that doesn’t wash. I was afraid, and instead of clinging tighter to my family, fighting for what I knew was right, having the courage to love unconditionally, and ask for help from those who loved me, I chose the way of the coward. Perhaps it was because I didn’t know anyone loved me. Even more terrifying was the idea that I didn’t love anyone.
    Susan found a little home in Southfield where she would go on to raise our children. She still lives there today. She also had to go on welfare and other state aid because any money she received from me was not enough either in amount or frequency to be of help. I was allowed to live with Larry Benjamin. Larry had just gotten a divorce in which he declared to his wife that he could not stay in his relationship with her because he was gay. And so he was. But he was also into an unstructured lifestyle. He was dealing drugs, mostly cocaine, and got involved in part ownership of a professional boxer. Larry’s particular manifestations revolved around young boys and Bentley automobiles.
    I got to sleep on the couch and as I had just moved in, hadn’t had time to figure out what his life as a single was like. I found out rather quickly, though, because one night I said goodnight and went to sleep fully expecting to be undisturbed. I always slept in the nude and so it came as quite a surprise to awake from the haze of the sleeping pills Larry had given me to help me sleep through the uneasy times I was facing, tofind myself uncovered and taking sitting space away from the twenty or so persons who had arrived at Larry’s invitation to enjoy loud music and plenty of drugs. Up until that point I thought there was a limit to how depressed one person could be.
    Larry finally took me to meet Barry Kramer. Even though I had absolutely no ties left to New York, New York felt they still had ties to Paramount Records, and to me. After taking the bath they took from Bob Crewe, they wanted to recoup some of the small fortune they had been talked out of. Paramount gave me an ultimatum: record with Jeff Barry in Los Angeles or record with Booker T. and the M.G’s in Memphis.
    The subsequent album,
The Detroit-Memphis Experiment
, became what I considered the high point watermark coming as it did in the middle of my despair. I had sacrificed, to a degree, my relationship with the Detroit Wheels to pursue rhythm and blues, had cut my own R&B album of original compositions to assert my independence from Bob Crewe, and now was being presented an opportunity to record an album with the premier R&B group in America. It didn’t matter that I did very little writing for the album, because it came as a surprise and we had a small budget. Booker T., Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, and Al Jackson,