Song of the Day 1/3: Bobby Womack, “Lookin’ for a Love”

Listening to this 1974 No. 10 hit for soul singer/songwriter/guitarist Bobby Womack, you’d never guess it started out as a traditional spiritual. Like much of the transformation of gospel into soul, Sam Cooke provided the spark.

The origins of “I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray” had already been lost by the time the Fisk Jubilee Quartet first recorded it in 1909. Dozens of spiritual singing groups followed suit over the years.

Sam Cooke, who started out with the gospel group the Soul Stirrers in 1950, had been mentoring the five-member Womack Brothers act, featuring guitar prodigy Bobby, since he heard them in a Cleveland church in the mid-’50s, around the time he started transitioning to secular music. When Cooke started his SAR record label in the early ’60s, he signed the Womacks, originally as a gospel group. He produced their recording of a revamped, modernized version of “Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray” that didn’t chart.

Secularizing gospel music was paying off for Cooke, so he took the Womack Brothers in the same direction. He asked his mentor and manager, J.W. Alexander, to rewrite the song as a doo-wop dance number. Renamed the Valentinos, they reached No. 8 on the R&B chart with the song in 1961.

It became a much bigger hit when it was updated with a funkier bass line and some Moog embellishment, courtesy of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Womack’s brothers, Curtis, Harry, Cecil and Friendly Jr., provided the backup vocals.

The song was also a minor hit in 1971 for the J. Geils Band, who sped it up too much. A much better cover was recorded in 1981 by Squeeze during their “East Side Story” sessions, with Nick Lowe at the helm. It sat in the can until an expanded edition of the album was released in 1997.