was locked, instead, into a recording contract with Brunswick Records, which had no idea of what to do with his remarkable gifts. Wilsoncould have been bigger than Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson; instead, he wound up entangled in grotesque musical arrangements full of florid strings and peppy white background singers. He recorded songs that Eddie Fisher would have rejected, including a never-to-be-forgotten rendition of âMy Yiddishe Mama.â
As a stage performer, Jackie Wilson was in a class with James Brown, far grittier than the choreographed and coiffured teenagers at Motown. His sweet-and-sour good looks and prizefighter grace inspired frenzy in his audiences, and passion in women. One, a fan, shot and almost killed him. Another, a neighborhood girl named Frieda, married him.
Frieda and Jackie met when he was nine and she was ten. They wed as teenagers, in 1951. Together they had four children, Jacqueline, Sandy, Anthony and Jackie Jr., and they lost othersâFrieda was pregnant fifteen times.
âJackie believed in keeping me barefoot and pregnant,â she said. âAnd not just me. I donât know how many other children he had. Women always liked Jack, even churchwomen. And he wasnât the kind of man to say no.â
In 1965, Frieda and Jackie Wilson were divorced. Ten years later, during an oldies show in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, the singer collapsed onstage from a heart attack. He lingered on in a coma for years, his money tied up in legal tangles, until he finally died in 1984.
But even before his stroke, the streets of Detroit began to claim Jackie Wilsonâs children. Jackie Jr. was shot and killed at the age of sixteen in circumstances that his mother did not want to discuss. Sandy died, of âunknown causes,â at twenty-three. And, in the summer of 1988, Jacqueline Wilson was gunned down.
The music community was shocked by the news, and saddened; many remembered Jacqueline as a little girl, backstage at her fatherâs shows. Berry Gordy sent money to bury her. The Four Tops dispatched a telegram. And Frieda Wilson, a prematurely old woman in a red ski cap, tattered overcoat and torn plastic shoes, went backto her rented room at the sleazy motel across the street from the party store and cried for days.
Once, when the money was good, Frieda Wilson lived like a celebrity. She had a big home and a fancy car. Her children were educated at exclusive Catholic academies, and she traveled in Detroitâs show business circles. In those days, she was an envied woman. But no one envies her anymore. Three of her children are dead, and she shares a room with a dying old man in a wheelchair, whom she nurses. There is only one window in the room, boarded up because of the gunfire of drug dealers in the parking lot. Frieda cooks on a Bunsen burner and cleans her dishes in the bathroom sink.
âThe income tax people took my house,â she said, sitting on an unmade bed. âAnd Jackâs estate is still all tied up, because of all these women and children he had.â Frieda Wilson picked up a picture of her dead daughter and stared at it. âWhen Jackie Jr. was killed, Jack couldnât even come to the funeral. He just locked himself up in his room and wouldnât come out. He wanted to see pictures of his son in the casket. He was very, very close with his kids; he was a family person. And now look whatâs happened.â¦â
Frieda Wilson has been battered by circumstances and she knows it. At times she seems confused and helpless. But occasionally she summons the strength to pull herself together, and you catch a glimpse of her as an articulate, ambitious young woman who dreamed the Detroit show business dream, a dream so powerful that it could, for a moment, dispel the gloom of the present.
âYou know, Jackâs songs are starting to sell again in England,â she said. A few months before, âReet Petite,â written by a man who has been
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