Today, Bobby Womack would be called a prodigy. When he started performing gospel music in the mid-1950s, he’d barely reached double digits, and by the time he turned 25 he’d already sang and played guitar with everyone from his protege Sam Cooke to Aretha Franklin to Ray Charles, written songs for The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, and Wilson Pickett, and (finally) hit the charts as a soloist with covers of “California Dreamin’” and “Fly Me to the Moon.” The Womack, though, was his first recording for United Artists, and the fact that they figured their new signee would be best showcased by a live album is indicative of the force of his performances. “On Saturday night, in Hollywood, California—a monster was born!” Bill Crite wrote in the liner notes (never mind that it was actually recorded nearly a world away, in South Central Los Angeles). “The artist? Bobby Womack! The monster? A collection of nine songs, recorded live and in full color.” Released at a time when live albums were increasingly manipulated, The Womack feels nearly untouched, with conversation and crowd noise left to add to the ambience—plus, the singer cuts through any extracurricular noise with ease. Compared to his earliest hits, these recordings are sprawling, ambitious, and indulgent: Take the extended guitar solo on “California Dreamin’,” or his extended “sermon” “The Preacher,” a callback to his early gospel days and the source of one of his nicknames. The album’s centerpiece might be Womack’s extraordinary medley with Percy Mayfield, “Laughing and Clowning”/“To Live the Past,” in which he pays homage to Cooke in exhilarating, gritty fashion—the crowded room is particularly audible on this track, and as those listeners hoot, holler, and laugh, contemporary ones will struggle not to do the same.