The Cheater: soul classic played role in web of war and death

When their song The Cheater became a hit, Bob Kuban and the In-Men couldn’t tour because that would risk them being drafted.

Supplied Editorial CHEATER

The Cheater. Bob Kuban and The In-Men (Written by John Michael Krenski — reached No. 12 on the charts, February 19, 1966)

Haven’t you heard about

The guy known as the cheater

He’ll take your girl and then

He’ll lie and he’ll mistreat her

Bob Kuban and his men were unlucky. They were a hot white soul act that could write catchy pop songs and, in Walter Scott, had perhaps St Louis’s best pop-rock vocalist. But Kuban’s band was made up of his former high school music students now at college and as long as they stayed there they were exempt from national service.

So when one of them — bass player Mike Krenski — wrote The Cheater and it became a local and then national hit, they couldn’t tour or do much national TV. To abandon their studies would risk their draft exemptions — Vietnam might beckon.

The Cheater is a blue-eyed soul classic and a one-hit wonder. Its punchy brass riff was as distinctive as Scott’s voice, which was commonly assumed to be black. Released in October 1965, it climbed the chart steadily in the first months of 1966.

Its lyrics are a warning to steer clear of the man who cheats on his girl and ruins her life: “He’s gonna build you up just to let you down.”

Scott was the only professional musician in the band. His real name was Walter Notheis Jr and he adopted the stage name pos­sibly so as not to embarrass his father, who was opposed to his son singing in a rock band. “There’s no money in that,” his dad would say.

Scott married Doris when he was 20, but touring Missouri on an endless series of one-night stands apparently led to precisely that. The marriage faltered, but as a strict Catholic he was opposed to divorce. They tried again, but this leopard’s spots were indelible.

Following the success of The Cheater, and its near-miss frustra­tions, Kuban stayed in St Louis as a prominent bandleader and nightclub owner, while Scott worked away at his endless one-night stands. After divorcing Doris he married Joanne, whose severe features matched her anger at her man’s infidelities.

Kuban and Scott remained friends and in the summer of 1983 Kuban suggested a reunion to see if they could recapture the magic. Scott was keen and by October the band had a rehearsal.

That month there was a curious, low-speed car accident in St Charles County, just outside St Louis. Sharon Williams, driving her Cadillac Seville, left the road and slipped down a small embankment and her car caught fire.

By the time police arrived, she was unconscious and fighting for life. The first officer there thought the scene odd, perhaps even set up. Maybe it was murder. At the hospital a nurse recalled that Williams smelled faintly of petrol. She was put on life support. Her husband, told it was unlikely she would regain consciousness, instructed it be turned off. Williams was recorded as having died accidentally.

Scott celebrated Christmas that year back in St Louis with his family. His mother gave him a pair of blue and white track pants, which is all he’d ever wear when not in his stage attire.

Two days later, Scott’s wife reported him missing; the following day his car was found at St Louis International Airport, with no clues to his fate and no record of him having bought a ticket.

That day, Scott’s parents arrived unexpectedly at his home and found a burly stranger going through a box of Scott’s jewellery and looking at his collection of guns. He was Jim Williams, a friend of Joanne who had been hired by Scott to do some electrical work in their basement.

He’d recently been widowed. His wife Sharon had died in a car accident. That night he stayed in the Scott house; a few years later he would marry Joanne.

Meanwhile, Joanne Scott hit the phones to cancel all her missing husband’s upcoming gigs, including the big earner on New Year’s Eve. With her husband’s whereabouts unknown she didn’t want to face any late cancellation fees, she said. She also told police she believed her husband dealt in narcotics and had underworld connections.

About that time Mary Case was hired as the Charles County medical examiner (her husband, Max E. Million, was once a member of bubblegum pop act Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, which had a US hit with Billy, Don’t Be a Hero in 1974).

Case then re-examined some old cases, including Sharon Williams’s car crash.

She quickly determined Williams might have been murdered. Examining the exhumed corpse in 1987 she saw the woman had suffered blows to the back of her head. The link to Scott’s disappearance was clear. Police visited Jim Williams’s son in Florida, where he was in jail on drugs ­charges. The young James said that if his father had killed Scott he’d have thrown the body in the river. But it had been a particularly vicious start to winter: the river was frozen, as was the ground.

Then he recalled how, oddly in those subzero weeks, his father had worked day and night to put in a wood-lined concrete flower box over the backyard cistern. Police opened the cistern the next day and found a bound and decomposed body floating there, still dressed in blue and white track pants.

X-rays showed that one cheater had been shot once in the back with a high-powered rifle.

The other cheater was convicted of the murder of Sharon Williams and Scott. He died in jail four years ago, aged 72.

Kuban rang Scott’s mother, Kay, then aged 88, with the news.