Haji Sabrie has operated an appliance repair business in Oakland for years. The devoted family man and his loving wife of 21 years have two children on the cusp of adulthood. A self-described “very religious” Muslim born in Texas and raised in San Francisco, he is a humble, happy man whose face falls naturally into a deep, radiant smile. He is understandably leery about bringing up the past.

“Haji Sabrie can move around anywhere he wants,” he says. “But with Rodger Collins, things can be difficult.” Rodger Collins is a name from Sabrie’s past. During the golden age of soul, Oakland never produced a bigger star than Rodger Collins. When he headlined the Showcase on Telegraph Avenue, he tore up the crowds as much as the other big-name acts that came through the room—Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Ike and Tina Turner.

And he cut a record that, if the country had heard it, would have made Rodger Collins an authentic contender. “She’s Looking Good” was not just another half-baked soul side that never got any further than No. 101, “bubbling under” Billboard’s Hot 100. The track was a certified, stone-in-the- groove, drop-dead classic that never got a fair hearing. Where it was played—including in the Bay Area—the record was a smash. It vied for the top of playlists on local Top 40 stations with the Rolling Stones, the Monkees and Buffalo Springfield in the early weeks of 1967, a heady time for pop music on the radio.
Sabrie, 64, doesn’t like to do interviews. His last one, with Britain’s Melody Maker magazine more than 20 years ago, did not prove satisfactory. He was news at the time because another one of his old records was experiencing a comeback. While speaking with a reporter, he sips a homemade brew of chopped ginger and picks at fresh fruit from a platter on the living room coffee table in his West Oakland home. The scent of spice and flowers wafts through the sunny rooms.

“I liked performing,” Sabrie says. “But I didn’t like all these problems with bands, hassling with musicians all the time. By this time, my career was fading. So I retired from show business.” He remembers harmonizing doo-wop in the tiled bathrooms at the Hamilton Recreation Center, where Bobby Freeman, San Francisco’s first rock ‘n’ roll star, would work out with his first vocal group, the Romancers.

As Rodger Collins, he won a talent contest pantomiming a Chuck Berry record and did a wicked Elvis impersonation. Brook Benton, an older songwriter and recording star ("It’s Just a Matter of Time"), counseled the young Collins backstage at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre to work up his own act and sing the songs himself, promising to send him some material. Sabrie still has the acetates Benton sent.

He studied drama at the Actor’s Laboratory in San Francisco and moved to Los Angeles, where he thought his star would rise, but wound up in a Wilshire Boulevard car wash polishing Rock Hudson’s silver Chrysler Imperial. Back in San Francisco, singing at local clubs, Collins came to the attention of Fantasy Records, which was having some success in the R&B field on its Galaxy subsidiary with blues singer Little Johnny Taylor.

“Fantasy sold Mexican music and jazz,” Sabrie says. “They weren’t set up to handle a soul record or soul-pop…” Collins began to develop an interest in Islam. He toured with soul singer Joe Tex, himself a Black Muslim minister, and together they visited mosques all over the country. “For a while, that white-man-is-the-devil stuff worked for me,” he says. “But while I was saying that, I never gave up my white friends.”

Sabrie followed the lead of Imam W. Deen Mohammed, of Black Muslim founder Elijah Muhammad, who took over the sect after his father’s death in 1975 and immediately set a more conciliatory course. “Mohammed (PBUH) taught that everybody was equal,” Sabrie says. “You may come with a male or female body, but the person inside is a human. The creature inside doesn’t have a race.”

The more he studied the Koran, the more he grew disenchanted with the music business. His last nightclub engagement was opening for Ike and Tina Turner and Redd Foxx at Las Vegas’ Hilton International, playing the lounge while Elvis played the big room, hardly hard-luck, bottom-rung show business. But he was not happy with his career in records and found himself the victim of company politics.

“It discouraged me thinking I would get a fair shake with the record industry,” Sabrie says. “But it didn’t discourage me to improve myself as a human being. I knew happiness was available.”

So, 30 years ago, Rodger Collins retired from show business and changed his name to Haji Sabrie. With a couple of scarcely noticed exceptions—a nightclub appearance here, a one-off single there—Rodger Collins disappeared as if he’d gone into the witness protection program. “People say, ‘Didn’t you miss out on a lot?’ “ Sabrie says. “Everything that happened was supposed to happen. You can’t change it. No one can change it.”

Sabrie learned the appliance business. He has run his company, Trustworthy Appliance Repair, longer than he was in show business. His youngest child entered UC Riverside last fall. Sabrie has made two pilgrimages to Mecca to pray at the holy Mosque. He leads a full, happy life with immense dignity. “I’m successful when I wake up in the morning and see my wife and know she’s a decent human being and know she lived up to a vow we made when we got married: not to criticize but to improve the other one.”

“I do a lot of things that might not be what some other people like to do, “ Sabrie says. “But it works for me. If I see someone on a path I’m not on, I respect that. I love a lot of people who disagree with me. But there is nothing worthy of worship except the Creator—not the creation, only the Creator.”