Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You: A Siblings Memoir of Legendary Soul Singer Wilson Pickett

By Louella Pickett-New

Louella Pickett-New was legendary soul singer Wilson Picketts sister no. 4, to whom he gave the nickname Lucy Coot and mostly called just Coot throughout his life. She lived with him in New York City as a teenager during the 1960s when he was at the peak of his fame. He threw her a sweet sixteen party. She tried in vain to teach him to dance. Shes the Little Lucy Doin the Watusi in his hit song Land of a Thousand Dances. In this book, named after another of his hits, a beloved .little sister pays tribute to her famous big brother.

Merging her own memories with those of the rest of their siblings as well as others who were close to him, Louella paints a portrait of the complex and wounded man behind the powerful and powerfully expressive voice that sang In the Midnight Hour and so many more enduring soul classics.

Louella is married to Emmett New, and they have two adult children, Katina and Dominic. They reside in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Louella has a masters degree in business and works for a community action agency in Decatur, where she is the accounting manager. She also sings in the choir at her church and volunteered her spare time as the church comptroller for many years. She enjoys baking her famous peach cobbler from her grandmothers recipe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499052862

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Copyright © 2014 by Louella Pickett-New.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014912834

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-5285-5

                Softcover      978-1-4990-5284-8

                eBook         978-1-4990-5286-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Some of the information in this book was provided by other sources through interviews. The author and publisher make no warranties as to the accuracy of these statements.

Rev. date: 12/10/2014

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Alabama

Chapter 2 Migration To The Motor City

Chapter 3 I Met A Lady …

Chapter 4 Stardom

Chapter 5 Musical Success

Chapter 6 Family

Chapter 7 Through Sickness And Death

Chapter 8 Aftermath

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors, Louella Pickett-New, Joya Wesley, and Jeannie Pickett-Rochelle, would like to acknowledge the following for their assistance in making this completed book a reality:

All of the Pickett siblings and other friends, colleagues, and relations who consented to interviews, including our late brothers Willie James Pickett and Hezekiah Pickett; sisters Katherine Williams and Bertha Harbison; Pickett companions Dovie Hall and Gail Webb; stepmother Helen Pickett; sons Michael Pickett; daughter Soumaya Zein; niece Lena Chase; former musical colleagues Jack Philpott, Wayne Cobham, tour manager, Chris Tuthill; author, Lithophane Pridgon.

Musicologist, collector, and graphic designer Heinrich Buttler of Bonn, Germany, for the cover design, as well as his invaluable help throughout the writing process through sharing music, photographs, video, liner notes, and other research. Online resources including Wikipedia.com, soul-patrol.com, and bbc.co.uk.

INTRODUCTION

Leaving a musical legacy recognized by his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Wilson Pickett passed away on January 19, 2006, at the age of sixty-four. Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You tells the story of a man who succeeded royally in his childhood desire to get himself and his family out of the cotton fields of Alabama.

The death of my brother Wilson Pickett was one of the most profound experiences of loss in my life. His death made me realize how short life can be. It also challenged me to transform my memories of our times together—as well as those of my siblings and others who were close to him—into something of which I could be proud of. This book, which merges our many memories and voices into one, is that something.

Despite all the pain and anguish, all the hurts and tears, I have learned to live life to its fullest. While this memoir is dedicated to my brother’s legacy and extraordinary accomplishments in the music industry, it also seeks meaning in the tragedies that were part of his journey to fame and fortune. I believe it presents a clear and balanced view of an individual the world remembers as a man and a half.

I hope you enjoy it.

Louella Pickett-New

Stone Mountain, Georgia

March 2014

CHAPTER 1

ALABAMA

I grew up in Prattville, Alabama. Right there in the cotton patch. . . I was driving trucks pulling tractors when I was about 9 years old. I was picking about 3 or 400 pounds of cotton a day. We’d work hard, from sunup to sundown, six to six. I’m so glad that I was able to get away from there. Once I got a toehold I moved my whole family out from down there.

—Wilson Pickett

In practical terms, eleven of us were born to Lena Jackson Pickett, the second of four children born to Shepherd and Clara Jackson, sharecroppers near Prattville, a tiny central Alabama town located 15 miles north of Montgomery, the state capital. No. 2, Bertha, was born with a twin who survived only a few weeks; but eleven of us siblings shared with Wilson Pickett a hard childhood on a cotton plantation set in the deep Alabama woods.

In our memory, Wilson was a rebellious little boy with an uncommon determination—from an early age—to get out of the cotton fields.

He would mumble, White man ain’t never gon’ tell me what to do no more. Bertha remembers as well as how he complained that it was too hot and that they had to work too hard picking cotton in the heat.

There’s debate among us as to whether he actually hated white people, but there’s no denying that he hated the ways of the ones around as he grew up near Prattville, which in 2009 unveiled a historic marker for his birthplace. Along with the marker came a Creek Walk and a museum with some of Wilson’s paraphernalia, donated by his estate. Judging from the way Wilson left the area at fifteen—never to return or to speak a kind word about the place—we are quite sure that he wouldn’t have wanted any of his belongings there. As soon as he was able, he got our mother and the rest of us out of there too.

The raw-edged, gritty sound of his voice was a reflection in large part of the childhood scars inflicted on him by the harsh racial, social, and economic conditions that defined life for poor black people in the South during the 1940s and 1950s. His determination got him out of the environment; but the environment stayed in him, not only reflected in his voice but also in the hard, unyielding attitude he took throughout his life toward enemies and friends alike.

Although he didn’t often show it as an adult, we always knew that at Wilson Pickett’s heart was the caring, generous, multitalented little boy who was kind to us and loved to serve his grandparents and other older people in the village that raised us. In his hit records, we heard the same voice that made neighbors stop and shout as he and Sister Jeannie sang their way to and from church.

When Wilson Pickett was born on March 18, 1941, under the sign of Pisces, our parents, Lena and Wilson Pickett Sr., already had three children: seven-year-old Katherine, who we call Kat; five-year-old Bertha, who we call Bert; and four-year-old Willie James, who we call James. Still to be added to our family (from which our father was soon subtracted), were Emily Jean, who we call Jeannie; Hezekiah, who later changed his name to Hercules, which we shortened to Herc; then Maxwell (Max), Louella (Lou), Linda, Lily Bell, and Vanessa.

While we moved around some, and our memories vary some—partly because our wide span of ages gives us varying perspectives—most of our childhood memories are centered in the block house near where our mother brought us home to her parents, our Papa and Granny, after our father moved to Detroit, where he ultimately stayed.

The white Queen and Smith families owned most everything in the area, including the land on which Papa and Granny were sharecroppers. We were deep in the country, miles away from anything other than cotton fields, cornfields, and woods.

The way we live now, when you say your neighbor, you’re talking about somebody next door or two houses up or in the same community or something like that. Well, our neighbors were miles away. Like the Jacksons lived three miles across the cotton field, Herc remembers. The Studemeyers lived five miles away, and Cousin Sara and Cousin Fannie lived about four miles away. The closest store that we used to go to was nine and a half miles away, and we used to have to walk that far to the store just to get a pack of cigarettes for one of our older sisters or something like that.

Wilson used to walk a lot. Whenever he used to go to court his girlfriend Clara Kate, he used to have to go from where we lived to Happy Hollow, which was about four and a half, or roughly five, miles; but he would go often.

Over the years, our family size changed, with the older children eventually moving out, the youngest yet to be born, and Mama herself moving back and forth between Alabama and Detroit, taking different ones of us with her. By the time I was born, however, she was home to stay. Her on-again, off-again marriage to Wilson Pickett Sr. was off for the last time.

Mama didn’t raise me, Pickett liked to say. Papa and Granny raised me.

It hurt her feelings later in life to hear him say that, but it wouldn’t be accurate to let the fact that Lena Jackson Pickett was our mother kept us from telling the truth about her. While she loved us and worked hard with the rest of the family, and we loved her, she was a brutal disciplinarian; and Pickett wasn’t lying when he said that she was the baddest woman he knew. She also liked to go out and party and did often leave us in Granny’s care.

They raised all of us. Bertha sees things a little differently, but even she has to acknowledge that Granny and Papa did do a lot for us.

Granny and Papa are two areas in our lives where we’re all in agreement.

My grandmother was sweet. She was the sweetest person I know. She was very loving, kind, and my mother used to be out at parties and my grandmother took care of us. She fed us. She’d bathe us, and she’d make sure we were fine.

She was the best cook, says Kat, who especially remembers her teacakes, which always seemed to go too fast. It was a lot of us, but every now and then, she would make up a batch, and we would sit around and eat ’em while they were hot.

Her biscuits were also memorable to all of us, and she taught the older girls how to do it as she did.

She taught me how to cook, Bertha remembers. She got me started cooking on my own, and she was the one that taught me how to cook. She taught us a lot of things that Mama didn’t teach us.

But she didn’t teach Kat, her oldest grandchild, who has to agree with the rest of us that she was a little spoiled.

She taught them how to do biscuits and stuff, Kat says of her younger sisters, but when I got married, I didn’t even know how to cook. I didn’t do much. I didn’t know how to cook. During the day, whatever time I wanted to get up, my breakfast was sitting on the stove over hot water.

Like the other older girls, however, Kat did have to take care of her younger brothers and sisters. Bertha and Jeannie even missed school because of their child-care duties, which mounted when our mother was sick or absent, as she often was.

Through our whole childhood, Granny was there to fill in the gaps.

She was a little bitty, little petite woman, but she worked hard to take care of us.

Granny really helped to raise all of us, adds Kat. Mama had gotten married and lived on the Queen-Smith farm then went to Detroit and came back home, but she was always in and out. So I’m sure that’s why he thought Granny and them raised him, because he was always in the house with Granny.

We all also loved our grandfather, who most of us called Papa. While the Queen-Smiths were the law outside our home, Papa was the law inside. Shepherd Jackson was a tall, stern big-boned man who acquired the name Shepherd because he was a minister. His big frame, which Mama inherited, contrasted with the tiny one of our Granny.

Granddaddy was greatly loved by everybody because he was the provider. He loved us all. He treated us all with respect. He was a strict disciplinarian, but he was the type that command respect without having to put out a lot of effort, because he was just that kind of person. The same thing I can say about our little petite grandmother. She commanded respect because of just who she was. We all had a great relationship with our grandmother and our grandfather. There wasn’t a whole lot of stress there.

We all looked up to Papa.

He was a good father and a good provider who rescued his daughter and her children from the nearby Washington Hill community, where Pickett was actually born.

Mama had five kids when Daddy left her to go to Detroit, Kat recounts. "Daddy left Mama at the house, but Mama had no means of supporting the children, feeding them and taking care of them and all that. They were basically there starving. There was nothing.

So Daddy didn’t come back, and Mama didn’t hear from him, so she got someone to get word to her father that she needed him to come and get her. It took him several weeks to make his way to get Mama, but he did, and when he got her, he brought her back to this house.

The house we all call the block house had four rooms made of cinderblocks.

My mother moved back to this house when she was pregnant. I was born there, and then Linda was born there, and Lily was also born there.

There were four rooms, two on one side and two on the other. We all slept in one room on rollaway beds. Pickett and James slept in the kitchen because my mom slept in the kitchen with them. She wanted to keep an eye on them. And Herc and Max slept in the living room with us.

A highway ran right by the front of the house. The bus that took us to school, which was seventeen and a half miles away, stopped right outside our door. Behind the house were a woodpile, a smokehouse, and miles of fields and woods beyond.

Although Daddy worked for a while, tending to the Queen-Smith Farm hogs, most people—even children as young as five—picked cotton for their living. Herc remembers the price at $3 per hundred pounds, which meant families had to pick a lot of cotton to earn money for enough to eat.

When Pickett was born, the family was living in the Washington Hill community then moved soon afterward to an area called Smithy’s near Red Devil Lake. Our two oldest siblings, Kat and Bert, are the ones who remember this period when they both, in turn, took care of Pickett and our older brother James.

Kat gave Wilson Jr. the nickname Wiggy, which stuck until he became a star.

When he was born, I was the oldest one and I had to babysit, Kat remembers. He wouldn’t hold still, and I just looked at him one day, and I said, ‘Ooh, Mama, he won’t hold still, so I’m gonna nickname him Wiggy.’ So that’s how he got his nickname Wiggy. And from that, everybody started calling him Wiggy.

After a couple of years in Washington Hill, the family moved to Smithy’s for an even shorter time.

We weren’t there for long, Kat says of that house. I was about eight, because that’s when I got hit by a car. James was old enough to ride on the truck with Daddy Wilson, the wagon, rather. It was when he took care of the Queen-Smith Farm pigs.

James remembers traveling to town on Saturdays in the wagon. The stop to get ice was always last.

Bert and Kat have a vivid memory of the accident with the car, which killed one of their young playmates, a girl who lived in the other half of the two-family house where we lived.

The girl was hit by the car and fell back on Katherine, and then Katherine fell back on the sign, and it knocked Katherine unconscious when she fell back, recounts Bertha. I saw the car coming down, and I was trying to get them to come back. I was hollering. I said, ‘Y’all come back, come back. The car is coming real fast!’ They didn’t turn around, and that’s when the car hit the girl and Katherine fell back on the sign and she passed out … And then I took care of Wilson and James while they were gone to the hospital. I was the little girl that took care of them. I was about six years old then. It was scary, because it just tore the girl’s face up. You didn’t see no face, hardly, and Katherine got a whole lot of scratches and bruises by falling back on that sign.

It wasn’t long after that accident that the family moved to another part of the area, as Bertha remembers.

"I don’t know how long Daddy worked for Queen-Smith Farms, but I know the next move we made was to a little house across the field somewhere over there, and that still was Queen-Smith Farms, because Queen-Smith owned just about everything.

While living in that house, Wilson and our brother James were little boys who spent a good deal of time playing around the plantation with the white sons of some of the plantation owners, who were around their same age.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, but I did most of the babysitting there in that little house, keeping James and Wilson, Bertha says. But they didn’t do nothing but a lot of running around, because there were a lot of fields, open space, and they mostly would stay around that man’s house a whole lot, helping him to do things. Mr. Queen-Smith was sorta nice. He treated them nice, and he would let them do things around the house and help him and stuff like that. This was when they were little boys, and they were just running around. The little children that Queen-Smith and them had, they used to play with them, the little white children. They used to play with them all day long from the time they’d get up and eat breakfast. Sometimes they used to eat with those people. They never did eat right at the table with them, but they would feed them. You know how it was back then.

The integrated group of little boys amused themselves with such activities as climbing trees, playing in the woods, looking for plums on trees, looking for blackberries, ‘and different stuff like that,’ Bertha said.

As he grew up, Wilson developed into a loner, who often preferred to keep his own company.

Wilson was a to-himself kind of little boy, Bertha says. He would roam the woods and things, but it would be him by himself. He just loved to be by himself. He’d go fishing by himself. He wasn’t one that loved to hang with nobody.

He was also very possessive about his belongings and from a young age demonstrated violent flashes of temper.

He and James would argue a whole lot when they were little boys, Bertha remembers. James didn’t want to argue with Wilson, but anything James touched of Wilson’s, Wilson would get all upset. ‘You know I’m gon’ kill you too!’

Once when they were teenagers, Bert and Kat remember James and Wilson having a dispute that developed to dangerous proportions and forced our mother to intervene.

In the woodpile, down at the block house, they got into an argument … something James had messed with of his. He had been hunting—he had been out in the woods, and he came home that evening, and James had messed with something of his. I disremember what it was, but anyway, he drew the rifle on James. He said, ‘I’ll shoot you!’ Mama stopped that one evening.’

Back in the days before the rifle, around the time Wilson first taught himself to hunt with a slingshot, he was his grandfather’s little shadow.

He was a grandfather’s boy. He loved Papa and Granny … He always would sit up under Papa when he was at home. If he was at home, he was on the porch with Papa. Or wherever Papa was, in the woodpile or taking a walk, he would be behind him and Papa would say, ‘Where you going, boy?’ And he’d say, ‘I’m going witchu!’ And he would follow Papa around.

A notable exception was when it was time for Bible study. Papa was a minister who would have Bible study with us in the evenings on the porch.

When Papa would get ready to have Bible study, then he didn’t want to be there because he didn’t want to be in Bible study, Bert pointed out. But Papa would make him come sit down anyway.

While Bible study generally wasn’t a time for fun and games, we remember one hilarious moment when Papa beat Herc with the Bible.

One evening while Papa was listening to spirituals on his big early-’40s radio and reading his Bible, I remember Herc getting into trouble for asking, What’s the Bible puttin’ down?

Papa took the Bible and