From the S&S archives: The $50 misunderstanding (or 'what am I doing here?')

Lou Rawls began singing as a child in a gospel choir on the South Side of Chicago.

"I had a grandmother who said you would go to church, or else. And the 'or else' you didn't want to know about."

Making the 'best of a bad situation, Rawls joined the church's junior choir. "That meant you didn't have to sit there during the service all day, because, you see, after the singing, the minister would say that the kids in the choir were dismissed and we could go outside."

One of the kids joining Rawls outside was the late Sam Cooke, and it wasn't long before they formed an amateur quartet.

"We started singing in the churches around the city and then just kind of naturally, we started playing places like Detroit and St. Louis," Rawls says. "Places where we could play the weekends and get back in time for school Monday."

Rawls credits Cooke — the first to turn professional — as the inspiration he needed to take up a singing career.

But, before he could launch that career, he would spend three years being launched out of Uncle Sam's planes with a parachute strapped to his back.

"It was all a mistake," he says with a deep-throated laugh. "When we were recruits, all these guys from the different outfits would visit us and pitch their units.

"Well, this dude came in one day with his spit-shined boots, his brass and braids and swagger stick and stuff and told us, 'Go airborne. When you go home on leave, you'll be the envy of your neighborhood.' "

That was nice. But then the soldier told them they would get $50 for jumping. That was all the incentive Rawls needed.

"What he didn't tell us was that it was $50 a month, not $50 a jump," Rawls says. "When I found that out, I asked my first sergeant who I could see to get out. He asked me if I'd passed the qualifying jumps and when I told him yes, he asked me how long I had to go.

'Three years,' I told him.

" 'That's when you'll get out,' he said."

It wasn't all bad. The elite 82nd, Rawls says, insulated him against the prejudices found in the military of the '50s.

"It wasn't like being in the regular Army," he recalls. "Everybody's ass was on the line. When you went out that door and if your chute didn't open ... Man, it didn't make any difference what color you were."

With the Army behind him, Rawls took up his singing career again, and, in 1966, he released "Lou Rawls Live." The album, which went gold, contained the single "Tobacco Road," and set the tone for the sound that would earn him Grammys in 1971 and 1977.

"The music hasn't changed much," he says. "I'm still pretty much in the same pocket. I think that's one thing people like about me — the consistency."

He has been called a pioneer of the "soul sound," but it's a label he balks over. "You know why they called my music soul music? Because that's what was happening when I broke through.

"The first album I cut with Les McCann, I was called a blues singer. The second album I cut with Ozzie Mathews and I was called a jazz singer. Then I cut an album with Benny Carter and I was called a pop singer.

"Man, I'm just an interpreter of song. That's it."

Rawls hasn't had a record out in the. past three years because of problems with Philly International, a recording company that Rawls says "sort of made too much money. The two guys who were in charge of it grew up on South Street in Philadelphia. Then, all of a sudden they were millionaires and they forgot how to talk with each other," he says.

Rawls left Philly International and signed with Epic Records. He also entered a lucrative pact with Anheuser-Busch Co., which explains why his tour wardrobe consists mainly of Budweiser sweaters and T-shirts.

Rawls' 48th album will he out early this year, along with a new single, "Upside Down." The album isn't really necessary, he says.

"I mean, it's not a thing where every time I turn around I've got to be in the studio, I'm not one of those people whose career depends on his last record. And that's the kind of career I've tried to build," he says.

Television and Las Vegas have kept Rawls in the public's eyes. "There's always the Carsons and the Griffins," he says. "As long as I can keep my face in the place, I'm gonna be OK."