Playing "Agent 00 Soul"

Edwin:

That was my first record, "Agent OO Soul". I was with Bill Doggett, who I had been with for two and a half years, travelling with him on the road. We went into New York and had a few days off and it was the same time the James Bond movie Agent 007 came out. Well I went to the show and I sat through the movie 3 times. I was completely at awe with this movie, anyway in my head I said there's gotta be a way to make this character come alive, this agent. There's gotta be a way to connect this guy with music so I went back to the hotel and I was sittin' on the side of the bed and I turned the radio on, and I was sittin' there with the idea, you know, trying to come up with how the idea could be made into a song. And all of a sudden the DJ, who I don't know who it was, but he said "This is the agent of soul" and the whole song with the music, all the l'ics, everything, all at one time, simultaneously hit me. I mean everything as you hear it on the record, that's as it came to me, it was one of those unbelievable moments when, you know, just absolutely everything, it just crowded my head, I mean, so much so that the next day I went to Bill and I said to Bill "Bill I just wrote this song which is unbelievable, it is just fantastic, it's called Agent Double O Soul" and I hummed it for him, you know, sung what I had and he said "That is very, very good, I tell you what, maybe next year you'll be ready to record it" and I said "Next year !!. I can't wait a year, it's a trendy song. It's a song of today, it's now. If I don't record it now I never will, who know how long this phenomena will last".

So anyway, I though about it for twenty four hours and then I went to him and I said, I said "I'm givin' you my two weeks notice, I've gotta figure out somehow, someway, something to do with this song" right. And we were going to Detroit to play at the "TwentyGrand". So when we got to Detroit I still didn't know what to do with the song, all I knew was that my gut feeling was telling me that I had a hit idea...I had a hit song.

While I was in Detroit I got approached by the people from Golden World...RicTic, and I said I didn't have any other material...that I just had the one song but I thought the one song was a hit. So we went in the studio and cut it. Living right in the hotel next door to me was Chuck Jackson and I went and knocked on his door 'cos I had known Chuck for a long time and I said to Chuck "I just cut a song that's absolutely fantastic". He said "Well come on in, let's hear it". So I played it for him and as I was playing it for him I was watching his face, right, and he went from just listening to completely elated and he said "I'll give you 10,000 dollars for that song right this minute. You know they call me 'Soul brother number one' ? That would be perfect for me "Agent Double O Soul" soul brother number one, you know" and I said "Yeah I'm sure it would be", and I went back to my room and said to myself "You must be joking if you're offering me 10,000 for it how much was it, what should it really actually be worth. If you are prepared to give me 10,000....I didn't even know what 10,000 looked like, I'd never even seen 10,000, right, but I was smart enough to know that if he was prepared to offer me...and the next morning he said "fifteen, fifteen thousand". "No, no no" I said, "I'm just gonna leave it as it is and go with it" and we went with it.