Soulobit: Bobby Womack

The link to the New York Times story about the death of Bobby Womack didn't work, so I was hoping it was just an internet rumour.

But it turned out my wifi had just seized up, and Bobby Womack is, indeed, dead.

As great a songwriter as he was a performer, he wasn't always the best strategist:

His friend Sam Cooke persuaded him to let the Rolling Stones record It's All Over Now.

"He said, 'One day you'll be part of history, this group is gonna be huge,'" Womack told BBC Newsnight in 2012.

"I said, 'Why don't they get their own songs?'"

He spent a long time not making music, too, because of the drugs; it was Damon Albarn who brought him back to the mainstream when he persuaded him to take part in the Gorillaz project.

Bobby Womack was 70; he'd been diagnosed with cancer and Alzheimer's Disease as well as the after effects of years of drug abuse but no cause of death has been made public.