Woman Who Lived Twice
Her Story of "The Late Great" "Otis Redding"By Loretta Williams HandyTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2007 Loretta Williams Handy
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4251-1407-7Contents
Introduction.......................................................................11 Early Childhood (Seaport Town, Mobile, Ala.).....................................42 Growing Up In California.........................................................183 The Return To Alabama, The Adolescent Years......................................224 My First Love, The Courtship.....................................................265 The Tragic Wreck The Aftermath...................................................296 Spritual Awakening At An Early Age...............................................317 The First Marriage...............................................................358 The Temptation And Infidelity....................................................389 The Separation And Return To California, The Rape................................4710 A Walk On The Wildside..........................................................5311 The Return To Mobile And The Reconciliation.....................................5612 The Retaliation And Payback.....................................................5813 The Singing Career/life With New Lovers.........................................7214 On The Road With The Otis Redding Show And Band New Affair......................8115 The Performances of Otis........................................................10316 Back Home Again In Mobile Ala...................................................12917 The Tragedy.....................................................................13918 Recovery & Healing..............................................................14919 Return To Mobile, The Divorce, New Marriage, Finding Christ.....................166Loretta Williams: Discography......................................................189
Chapter One
EARLY CHILDHOOD (SEAPORT TOWN, MOBILE, ALA.)
Here I am, I've made it, finally I've made it, I'm standing here in awe, looking out over the vast audience, wondering in my mind, can this really be me, I hear the sounds of the band, the funky, grounding, grueling sounds of the great Otis Redding band, winding up, waiting for me to make my grand entrance on stage, the great Appollo Theatre at my disposal, I look out over the audience cheering, clapping, calling to me, "it's Loretta from Mobile, Alabama", it's my time, the time I had dreamed about, the time I had longed for, the time I had really prayed for, to become a famous singer, never knowing I'd be here, the star vocalist of the "Otis Redding 28 piece orchestra on stage" New York City bright lights, big city, it's really me, as I walked onto that great big stage which looked like a hundred miles wide to me, and the big spot light flashed swiftly toward me, I felt I had really arrived, as the audience applauded loudly, and the stage announcer announced my grand arrival, I stood there, gazing, with my mind going back to the first day of my life, when life came to me in that cold dingy, little hospital room in a small seaport town, in Alabama, a place called the Mobile, General Hospital, where a little black woman travailing in pain and agony, with fear and trembling, in a room all alone trying to birth her first baby girl. And then, there I was, screaming, hollering, kicking, didn't need no slap on the fanny to start crying or breathing, my lungs were already working properly, very loud and clear, ready for the world and the singing, that would become my career.
Born January 31, 1941 in a small, busy, flourishing seaport town known as Mobile, Alabama on a cold windy winter nite, in a lonely isolated delivery room, a small baby girl and her mother struggled alone desperately to enter into this soon to be found as a strange world. This young mother in agony and pain holding the screaming, raging baby girl between her legs, (by the way) who needed no one to pat her on the fanny to get her to cry or to breathe the breath of life into her lungs but already had it in her, she came out with good lungs and raising hell her mother says: began screaming "nurse", Doctor, somebody please come help me, my baby has already come, help, somebody! And finally she was heard, and was then asked, why did you try to have this baby by yourself? My mom says she just looked at them and asked where were you? So as you can see my life started out rough. I could have died at birth, if my mom hadn't held me with her legs, the concrete floor could have been my fate!
Even though I could have died at birth it seems there was a higher power already guiding my fate. Time went on and I became the pride and joy of Levernon and Lillian Charletta Raymore, a father of West Indies decent, a tall handsome young man, well dressed, starched and pressed to the tee, high yellow in color as they called him, with very light brown piercing, exciting eyes, and a temper that caused him to lose his life at a very early age. My mother of African decent, a black intriguing beauty, small in stature but shrewd and cunning with long jet black, flowing hair that looked like the silkiness of a beautiful most prized horses' mane. She was a real beauty. Although I was somewhat of what you'd call a daddy's little girl, given the name of Loretta Vernell, named after my dad's cousin and him and one of my mother's favorite movie stars, {Loretta Young} of the Loretta Youngs' Show, this actress was my mom's idle, she says when she was pregnant and carrying me in her belly she loved going to the movies to see Loretta Young and she prayed for a baby girl she could name, Loretta.
I was loved by so many people of the family then being the first grandchild on both sides of the family, so I was divided also between two great-grandparents, by the name of Ada, of whom I called grandma Ada, who was my father's mom, who loved me and the spirits very much, and I don't mean the Holy Spirits, and the other on my mom's side was called Martha Eli Simon, whom I called Muh, something short for grandmuther: now she truly loved me also and had an even greater love for the younger set of men, I remember her words being "an old man couldn't tell her nothing but where a young man was at" and I would fall out laughing, she was a character, I guess because she had a very shapely body with the look of a much younger woman, a sexy walk with big beautiful legs, the fellows couldn't resist. {smile}
1 was a very sheltered little girl of which I credit my grandmother, she thought I was top of the line, I was cute, light complexioned, long red hair and very sassy, smart as a whip, she never allowed me to come out and play with other kids of the neighborhood mainly because we lived in a rough housing area called the campground, she felt wasn't too safe. My grandma, Muh, was a very proud picky lady who was an expert seamstress of the city and for this reason she could dress me in a new dress twice a day. She insisted I wore the best of shoes and clothes, she was so picky that she never allowed me to wear nothing but white three strap high top dress shoes every day, and didn't allow a tap of dirt to be on them. She taught me high standards of living although we were a poor family I guess I was always blessed of God. My other grandmother Ada, God rest her soul, on the other hand worked for a very prominent rich white family who lived on one of the most popular and prominent streets of downtown Mobile an old landmark called Government Street which is still called that today. This family lived in one of Mobile's most elaborate, beautiful anti-bellum homes with all the fixtures, beaming chandeliers, high staircases, high ceilings, long flowing drapes, tapestries of foreign imports on the floors, gleaming china trimmed in gold and silver, oh, it was something to see, you can imagine what this looked like to me, when my grandma Ada would bring me up those wide steps and those great tall white colums on the front porch, looked to me as though they were going to fall on us as we approached them. Most of the time back there as you will recall, in those days servants, as they were called had to use the back doors or side entrances, not my proud tough grandma, who also was almost as white in color as they were, and had a pretty good grade of hair, she also was of West Indies decent, would take her a drink in a minute and could talk some real strong words if you pushed her the wrong way, so she would come in just about any way she wanted to. {smile}
I've said it so often before, I guess God has always been in my corner, because even back when times were bad I was being blessed. This wonderful white family by the name of the Whitfields also took to me, their little girl by the name of Lois, and I became very close, we were like little sisters [they treated me that way]. This came about because her parents wanted me to be there as a companion to her because we were the same age and about the same size. My grandma most of the time lived in with them and would come home on the weekends and since my mother was working on the NYA at that time, an organization that was formed during the war, to help women and under-priviledged people to have jobs or an income, with everybody going to and fro, sometimes I would have to stay over with grandma Ada. So this is how I got so close to little Lois.
We would eat, sleep, and play together it was just the two of us, I don't recall there being other sisters or brothers. My grandma's bosses began treating me like I was one of the family, when they would do or buy for Lois they would get me the same things, clothes and all, dolls and toys alike. This is how I could wear velvet dresses, taffeta dresses with ruffles and high top shoes and carry porcelain dolls, not to mention how much my papa spent on me. Lois's parents bought me my first 48 piece of imported China, gave it to my mom for me to have at my first wedding day, you know they believed in all that kind of stuff back in those days, girls having their diary early in life, it made me feel really special and important to have received so much from such rich folk.
But I look back now and feel all this wasn't too good for a child my age, as I grew up in this atmosphere I almost forgot I was still black even though I was a very light complexioned with long reddish brown hair, at that time also, I was still black. I even got to the point I didn't want the little dark complexioned kids of the neighborhood to even touch my toys, when I came out on the porch to play, I felt I was too good to be with them, because sometimes their clothes would be a little ragged or dirty and their noses a little runny, and I was never allowed to be that way. I would cry if my mother tried to make me play with them, I was really a spoiled little brat. I would say ugly things to them so much so, that the kids on the block really hated me and would call me stuck up. I'm so very glad I grew out of that ugly frame of mind, but don't worry time and circumstances changed all that.
During this time of my life the greatest tradgedy that could have happened to me happened. I truly feel this played a great part in the turmoil my life held in the future, especially when it came to men, as you will read and find out about it as this story unfolds. I promise you will read some intriguing things that has happened to me during these two lives I have lived. This tradgedy was the shooting death of my loving, devoted, handsome father, to me he was beautiful because he was so good looking and he was so attached to me, something many would say was kind of out of the ordinary, because most black men aren't really dedicated to their kids as they should be, and you could not see (Peacock) as they called him as a nickname, without him having his little redhead girl with him, either up in his arms or sitting on his shoulders with her legs dangling down.
My mom says "my dad, even when I was in diapers, he would carry me everywhere he went, with a couple of diapers in his one pocket and a bottle of milk in the other back pocket, we looked alike and we were alike, had tempers alike also and could both pitch a temper tantrum." We were a twosome hardly could see one without the other, he treated me like I was his only son instead of his only daughter. He'd take me everywhere even in the poolrooms and dance halls with him. If I wasn't with someone else, I was always with my daddy, I loved him so much, I loved my "Peacock" as they called him. When "Peacock" was killed by an acquaintance he knew, really it was his best friend, during a heated argument they had, over some work they had done, it seemed to me this was the beginning of my sorrows for life and I had lost my greatest love and hope.
On the nite of the wake services at the funeral parlor, I can remember feeling very taunt and scared, horrified because I didn't understand what the undertaker had done to my daddy. I cried out as they raised me up to look into that dreary casket that held my daddy's cold body, "Mommie" I cried, "Mommie" "Where are my daddy's legs," as I could only see half of my daddy's body lying in the half covered casket, I think at that moment I had reached the depth of everyones' heart, when I said those words, because everybody started to cry, and my mom just broke down, when I said those words, this wasn't good with her being 7 or 8 months pregnant with my sister at the time, who never saw her father alive, it was a very sad day in our lives.
The big black hearse rolled along to the gravesite so very slowly, it seemed as though we'd never get there and when we did get there and proceeded to get out and go through the final rites, my fear was growing stronger and stronger, that something else terrible was about to happen. The preacher spoke the final words and they began to lower the body and throw the flowers in, and that's when I realized I'd never see my daddy again if they put that dirt on him, so I broke away from my grandmother screaming, "Mommie, Mommie" "don't let them put that dirt on my daddy," "Mommie" "I can't see my daddy anymore." I cried, "grandmama, don't let them cover my daddy up", from that moment on it was a living nitemare to me that I had no one to love me ever again as my daddy had loved me.
I had very little recollection of anything during that time as I had to learn to cope with being a young child grieving for her father. I do remember hating my father's killer who also was a friend of the family. As I have previously stated he was my dad's best friend. I hated hearing people say he would go free, because it was a fight and he did it in self defense. By him knowing my mom and the family so well he felt the need to come by one day and try to make amends to me and my mom for what he had done to us. Although I knew this man as one who had held me in his arms as a child, and played with me so many times when he and my dad had been together there in my mother's home, when I saw him and knew he was there in my house, I ran to fight and scream at him "I hate you, I hate you, you killed my daddy, and I'm going to kill you" as hurt as my mom might have been, she still tried to be calm and nice and tried unsuccessfully to make me behave and apologize, but I wouldn't and I just couldn't do it. I hated that man for many many years even until I was fully grown.
As I grew into a more responsible young lady, I grew very close to my mother now, trying to help her in anyway I could because I felt I was responsible to help fill in for my father, especially with my new baby sister Joyce Irene. Though we were not alone, my grandmother Muh, was living with us all the time. Soon after my little sister Joyce was born and I really felt I was grown now, I had someone under me to help see after, we called her "baby Joyce", she was very tiny and real dark complexioned but I didn't care about her color, I loved her and she was my little sister. I wasn't so all alone anymore.
Little Joyce was born sickly, with a bad case of asthma and bronchitis, which made my mom and grandmother have a hard time trying to support all of us. As my mom had not fully recuperated from having the baby and Grandma Muh, was making a little money taking in sewing for different people, you-can imagine-how-we were faring. As times got harder for us waiting on my fathers' social security check to start coming, my grandmother started seeing a man of very good means at that time, of course he was younger than her but older than my mom. He was a gambling man who had done very well with it.
This man seemed to move into our lives overnite to me. So very soon we moved from our downtown life in Mobile to a less expensive place out in the Prichard, Ala. area, of which I called it the country, and especially since we moved right near a railroad track, which seemed to me as if the train was going to come into our little two-room house, and I was so afraid of the trains. Out here people had hogs, chickens and cows. I was afraid of them too, so I just knew I was living in the country.
I was so afraid of the trains and the noise it made, until one day as I was sitting in my little rocking chair, rocking my little baby sister, and that train came by whistling and roaring and shaking the little wood frame house we lived in, I was in so much fear until I went into a total hysteria, screaming and crying, I totally forgot I had the baby in my lap and in my hysteria, I dropped the baby and she landed under the highlegged potbellied wood heater that sat in the middle of the kitchen, I was so afraid, when I finally came back to myself, I thought I had killed or burned my little sister. My mother finally calmed me down about the train and assured me the baby was alright for they had reached her in time, pulled her out and saved her from the heat of the heater.
I got over that occasion and here comes another fear upon me, when we learned that the friendship of the new man was only a cover up with my grandma, just to get in with my beautiful mother, who at this time was very vulnerable, she was young and alone with a new baby, no money and a very spoiled little girl to take care of, and a mother to help also. My mom didn't know about the scheme the very handsome, well dressed, grey eyed man of means had planned, but my grandma Muh, did. She was getting money under the covers, slipping it to Moma in the name of a secret admirer. My moma thought the young man was calling himself liking her mom, because he had never said anything to her, he was coming around like he was Muh's boyfriend, what a gasp this was.
So the truth made itself known when Mr. Otis Mitchell asked my mom out and told her she was who he wanted. Ms. Lillian Charletta didn't know what to say, she was shocked, because this had gone on for quite a while, before he told her this. When she questioned Muh, Muh said "girl, you better talk to this man, he's got plenty of money to spend on you and we shure do need it." I was just waiting for you to get well, so I could tell you he had been asked me for you. Now I had to face some other man trying to take my daddy's place.
As my story progresses on, we began to see a lot of Mr. Mitchell, it seems as tho we were getting a new daddy. I remember he bought Mama a new fur coat and in those days that was something great to a black woman, and was she pretty in it, look like that fur matched her long, silky, flowing black hair. He not only bought for mama, he bought and gave to my grandma, me and the baby. He really had come in being so nice to us and swept us all off our feet. Soon we became the Mitchell family and a little brother by the name of Otis Jr. was born, whom we thought the world of, little did we know what trouble and disappointment would follow.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Woman Who Lived Twiceby Loretta Williams Handy Copyright © 2007 by Loretta Williams Handy. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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