Goodnight Godfather

Christmas had a shade thrown over it this year by the death of a showbiz giant. I mean Mr. Dynamite, the hardest working man in show business, soul brother number one James Brown. I met him once, and here’s the story.

It was in New York City in 1983. My girlfriend at the time’s best friend was one of the GTOs, a notorious L.A. groupie gang. This girl, Amber, was not the lithe, lissome Pamela desBarres super-skinny groupie type. Amber was zaftig, rubenesque…she had a big butt! She wasn’t a model type but she had a personality that would set a building on fire. JB had been playing L.A. at the Forum, five nights in a row. Each night, Amber would wear some sexy outfit and dance wildly right in front of the stage. By night three she was backstage, by a week or so after the series of shows she was JB’s official girl.

Which meant she followed him on tour, armed with his credit card. The only proviso was she had to find a hotel separate from where the band was, even though the band all knew her and what was going on. She would go to the shows, hang out, and then go wait for him at her hotel.

So when they were coming to play New York, she called up my girlfriend. She could get us in to see him at the Westbury Music Fair. We could hang backstage and she could send a limo for us, did we want to go?

We arrived in limo-ish splendor at the Westbury Music Fair, which is not really a fair at all; it’s just a building. Amber met us and escorted us backstage. Into funky soul Valhalla.

Before we met James, Amber took us around the room and introduced us to the legendary legends who had played with James for centuries…Sinclair Pinkney, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, and Danny, the skinny, dapper man who introduced James nightly. He also was the guy who would throw the cape over James shoulders when it was time for James to be led offstage, as if he had given his all. In this classic schtick, sweaty, seemingly exhausted James would look like he’d blown his soul wad and was all funked out. He’d be shuffling off like an old man, only to be suddenly rejuvenated by a burst of soul power, throwing off the cape and launching into another song. At any rate, the famous players I met were friendly and modest; they had a real aw-shucks manner when I would tell them how much I loved the records they’d worked on.

It was the camp of a traveling army, well disciplined, with rigid routines. A big buffet of fried chicken, rice, beans and collards was set out. In one corner were racks of clothes with a seamstress ironing and making sure everything fit just right. It turns out that James later married the seamstress, but that’s another story. Finally, we were ushered into the inner sanctum, James private dressing room. “You have to call him Mr. Brown.” Amber told us.

He was a small guy, but also a giant to me, in his Spanish heels and early 80s skin tight get-up. Apparently JB rarely received visitors at all backstage, but Amber had made him do it on pain of no nookie. He was friendly and warm and had a firm handshake. James asked us if we wanted anything to drink, and had a Gatorade himself. I had the guy who invented Gatorade for a chemistry professor in college, and told him this, which launched us into a long conversation on the virtues of Gatorade. He liked it because it wasn’t too sweet and he sweated a lot onstage so it was good for that. My girlfriend, who was a hairstylist, asked him what products he used in his hair, and he said he only used one kind of hairspray, which was only available at a hair supply up in Harlem. He asked her if he gave her some money would she go up there and get a case of it and have it sent to his home in Augusta, Ga. Which later, she actually did.

Band members came and went. One of the guys was really young, in his early 20s. James said he had adopted that kid, literally, as an orphan, and trained him in bass playing from an early age. He launched into a monologue about how important the youth were, and the virtues of education, and how he funded schools and charities to help young people, and how he had de facto adopted many kids who lived on his farm in Georgia.

At that point, Wilson Pickett entered the room. Pickett was the opening act, another god of R&B. James introduced us all around, Pickett politely shook hands, then said, “Well James, I gotta go out on the fuckin’ stage and do the fuckin’ show.”

JB’s face clouded over. He was a southern gentleman. “Mr. Pickett”, he intoned gravely, “I wish you wouldn’t curse in front of my guests.”

Pickett got really pissed off. He drew himself up and, peering intently at JB, snarled, “Listen man, you might own your band, but you don’t own me. You don’t own Wilson Pickett. I’ll say fuck whenever I want to. In fact, fuck you James Brown!”

JB dramatically stood up, shoving his chair back, and for a second I thought I was going to see James Brown and Wilson Pickett throw down. But they both backed off, Pickett leaving the room in a huff, and JB settling back into his chair, angry. “I will never work on the same stage as Mr. Pickett again!” he told us. We went out and watched Pickett’s set, which was red-hot, then came back in to see what was going on backstage.

The musicians were doing their last tune-up, and JB was getting into his stage outfit. It was kind of a toreador look, with super tight, slightly flared pants, a black silk shirt and a vest. He had on his usual Spanish heels, which were maybe two inches high. JB’s performances were very athletic, with flips, slits, microphone whips, and I asked him if he did any warming up exercises before the show. He laughed and said “Nah, I just do a few squats to see if the pants are gonna split and that’s about it.”

At this point, the band was already onstage, warming up the crowd. When it came time for JB to march out, we walked right behind him. He told us to stand at a certain spot in the wings for the best view. “This is gonna be a good show tonight.” He told us. Then he strode out onstage to an ecstatic explosion of applause.

I’d seen him play before, a year or so earlier. It was good, but this show was amazing. His physicality was unbelievable. At one point he did a (standing) complete back flip – in heels, into a split, up, and into a microphone-whipping maneuver. He was on fire, and the band was killing. The audience was going bonkers, and even Amber, who’d seen a million shows by then, was wowed. The best part was, he kept looking at us over in the wings, pointing at us, putting the power on us, and laughing.

It was great, and then it was over. There was a second show, but we both had early morning day jobs in the city and had to get back. We said our goodbyes and got back in the limo. Amber came with us, since she had to find a hotel for herself. The plan was use the limo to find the hotel, then drop her back off and we take the limo back to the city.

We couldn’t find anything, all the nice hotels were full or we couldn’t find them. Finally, Amber told the driver to pull up on a bunch of black kids fuelling up a Volkswagen at a gas station. The kids looked a little stoned and bleary, and the limo driver was not into it. “I dunno Miss Amber…”

“Now, Steve, everything will be fine, and also Mr. Brown is into the youth. Plus if we’re nice to them, these kids will think twice from now on if they want to kill whitey.” Rolling down the window a crack, she called to them: “Do you guys like James Brown?” They were flabbergasted: “Is he in there?”

“No, but if you can find me a nice hotel here in town with a vacancy, I will take you to see him play, you will go backstage and meet him and Wilson Pickett, and have great seats for the show.” They were thrilled with the assignment, even more so when she invited one of them to ride with us.

He was wowed by the limo. “This is crazy, I can’t believe this. You must ride around in these all day.” I told him it was my first time too, and off we went and found a hotel for Amber. The last we saw of them was at the artists entrance to the Music Fair as they went in with Amber.

Days later in Chicago was when James wilderness years began, when he got into crack at an improbably late age. His erratic behavior caused a lot of the key players in the band to quit, and forced the cancellation of a command performance for the Queen of England. He married the seamstress, after he’d asked Amber to marry him and she’d turned him down. She didn’t want to live in Augusta and have to ride horses. Then came the whole crazy cavalcade of run-ins with the law, car chase, shots fired, jail time served. He got it together for his one last hit, “Living In America”. His act still hit the road nearly the entire year, filling houses around the globe. I saw him at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in the mid-90s, but he was an old man and hired dancers did most of the hoofing. If he busted out the slightest move, the crowd would freak out, but he was a shadow of the beyond live wire I’d seen.

But that’s beside the point. The point is: he was it! Wilson Pickett died recently as well, and I like to picture the two soul giants in a dressing room in heaven, getting ready to go out on the fuckin’ stage and do the fuckin’ show.