“If you know what’s good for you, you better get away from him”, they warned her. And then one night while Bob was away Mary and Cookie cornered Betty. One night from behind a closed door Betty overheard Mary warn him, “Bobby, don’t you take this pretty girl and put her on the street!”Īt the time naïve country girl, Betty had no idea what Mary was talking about.Īt the height of their courtship, Bob and Betty had been virtually inseparable for weeks. “Mama, I will mama, I promise mama, I’ve changed you’ll see!” he swore and swore, but Mary didn’t believe him. Betty remembers Mary constantly chastising him: “Bobby, you need to repent! Repent for all that you’ve done.” Day and night out loud, she prayed for his salvation. Deeply religious and proud she had serious concerns about her only son Bob. Betty was instantly swept off of her feet by this mysterious man who not only correctly guessed her dress size, but also drove an impeccably clean old Chrysler with a record player in the back seat of the car.Īt the time, Bob was sharing an apartment with his sick mother Mary Brown Beck and her caretaker Cookie. When he picked her up that night he handed her an expensive black and gold dress to wear for the evening. “Are you gonna take me someplace where I can eat soul food and listen to some gut bucket blues?” she asked him, to which he answered, “Sure, my dear.” After a couple of weeks the mysterious man simply introduced himself to her as “Bob” and asked if he could take her someplace where they could eat something “other than hamburgers.” That’s because according to Betty’s recollection the man was “elegant and refined” and looked like he could’ve been the president of a bank or a doctor. “But there was one thing that I knew for sure,” she states “and that was that he sure in the hell wasn’t from around there.” The man – tall, slim and charming, was impeccably dressed, Betty recalled how “uncomfortable” he made her feel, “he was just sitting there looking at me”, she said between coughs. It was at a hamburger stand in Lemert Park, where she soon caught the eye of an enigmatic stranger. Though raised by redneck parents in a time of strict segregation, Betty dug soul food and Jimmy Witherspoon records. This story starts in 1961 when a then twenty-six year old Betty Shue moved to Los Angeles, California from Austin, Texas. To her dying day, her fondest memory will be the day she met a striking looking man with a mysterious past. Though Betty and Bob were never legally married, to this day, she still uses the last name Beck. Betty, the mother of his three stunningly beautiful daughters: Camille, Melody and Misty (who has been featured three times in Jet Magazine as the Beauty of the Week) assisted Bob with his Holloway House titles: Pimp, Trick Baby, Mama Black Widow, Naked Soul, Long White Con, Airtight Willie and Me and Death Wish. But don’t get it twisted, he wrote about what he knew about – and a lot of it was first hand.Īccording to Betty Beck (his common law wife of the 60’s and 70’s) and Misty (their youngest daughter) he was a man who had clearly “saw and experienced a lot” in his life. When he wasn’t incarcerated, he was holed up in hotel rooms hiding from the law. He was a gentleman pimp and con man, who educated himself in four penitentiaries. Robert Beck was enigmatic, hard to figure out clever, vain, anti-social and elusive. Yet, very few people know the true story behind the making of his classic memoir. In his absence, folklore took precedence over fact.īefore the author died in 1992, he had sold more than six million books in four different languages and inspired two generations of rappers, poets, actors and writers. Pictures of his face and real biographical information were as hard to find as Osama Bin Laden. But then in the eighties, he dropped out of sight, right when his name had taken on mythical proportions in the hood. In twelve years, Beck wrote seven books, which vividly captured the inner world of the street hustler. On one hand, it was an ode to his former profession, but on the other…it was all he had. Robert Beck was forty-seven years old when he started writing a brutal book called Pimp.
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