So Long, Wilson, Hope The Shoes Served You Well

I read the news today, oh boy. (Sorry, corny and clichéd, I suppose, but that's exactly how I felt.) Wilson Pickett, dead at 64 of a heart attack. So sad, so young. One of the true icons of 60s soul, gone to that great big gospel choir in the sky.

In the fall of 1974 I was 19 years old, a sophomore at William Paterson College of New Jersey, working part-time as a shoe salesman at Broder's Florsheim Shoes in the Paramus Park Shopping Center. A nice-looking black man with a lot of jewelry on his fingers came in to the store and asked to see a pair of shoes in his size. I brought him the shoes and helped him put them on. He took a walk around the store, looked at them once or twice in the mirror, and said "I'll take 'em." (By the way, in the shoe business, this is what is known as "the perfect customer.")

At the counter, he handed me his credit card. I looked at the name on the card and my jaw dropped open. Wilson Pickett III. I looked up at him and said "you're Wilson Pickett?" With a laugh and a huge smile, he said, "yes, I am." And, believe it or not, all I could say was "wow" (remember, I was just a wide-eyed rock-and-roller back then, a mere young lad about to embark on a 20-year career in the music industry; I was not yet the cool, calm and collected man-of-the-world that I would soon become.)

So here he was, standing in front of me, the man who gave us "Mustang Sally," "In the Midnight Hour," "634-5789" and so much more, the man who dared to cover the Beatles' "Hey Jude" and did it well (so did Jose Feliciano, and I still claim to this day that those are the only two covers of that song worth a second listen), and he was buying Florsheim shoes in a store in Paramus, New Jersey (he lived in Englewood at the time), like he was just a normal, everyday kind of guy. But he wasn't. He was Wilson Pickett, and he was buying shoes from me, little ol' Kenny Altman, and I was floored.

Bye bye, Wilson, thank you for everything you shared with us, and I hope the shoes served you well. Thanks for the big smile you gave me back in 1974; it was as real and genuine as the smile I am smiling as I write this. :)