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 th e hell wasn’t from around there.” The man – tall, slim and charming, was impeccably dressed, Betty recalled how “uncomfortable” he mad e 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 th e eye of an enigmatic stranger. Though raised by redneck parents in a time of strict segregation, Betty dug soul food and Jimmy Witherspoon record s. This story star ts in 1961 when a then tw enty-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 abou t 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 th e law. He was a gentleman pimp and con man, who educated himself in four penitentiaries. Robert Beck was eni gmatic, 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 for mer profession, but on the other…it was all he had. Robert Beck was forty-seven years old when he started writing a brutal b ook called Pi mp. How ex-pimp Robert Beck transformed into writer Iceberg Slim,introducing a new genre for literature, film and music
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