Tales from the Tour Bus - The Vickery Family

Bootsy Collins

Narrator: Aaron and Zola did met William Earl "Bootsy" Collins, the bassist for George Clinton's band Parliament-Funkadelic.

Bootsy Collins: A lot of stuff I can't remember exactly 'cause I was taking acid, you know, every day, from, like, 1968 until the tail end of the '70s. But you guys are gonna have interviews with other people who was there, right? 'Cause I'm gonna need to find out what actually happened in that time.

Frankie "Kash" Waddy: Bootsy and his brother Catfish, we'd been playing together since we were kids.

Narrator: Drummer Frankie "Kash" Waddy is one of those people who can help fill in the gaps. He grew up playing music with the Collins brothers in Cincinnati, Ohio. Catfish's real name is Phelps.

Frankie: We weren't very well off, but it's not gonna stop us. We were just getting our ass kicked, you know, and loving it. We had a Dodge Dart station wagon that we could put all our equipment in, and all of us, so we could get to our gigs.

Narrator: They had a reputation for playing James Brown songs under the name The Pacemakers.

Frankie: One night, we played at this place called the Wein Bar, on the corner of Rockdale and Redding Road. We made $14 in total.

Bootsy: So, we were playing, jamming on stage, you know. Next thing I know, the bartender came up and said, "Bobby Byrd is on the phone."

Narrator: Bobby Byrd is the soul and funk impresario. The singer-songwriter, band leader, and producer who helped launch the career of the hardest working man in show business, James Joseph Brown.

Bootsy: So, I get on the phone, and he says, "James Brown wants y'all to come to Columbus, Georgia, right now, and play on the show." And I was like, "Come on, man, quit joking." And he said, "No, no. I'm serious. I'm on the way in James' Learjet, "and I'm gonna pick you guys up, and we're gonna fly down here, and we're gonna do this show." And the next thing I know he's there at the Wein Bar. Had the limo out there, you know, uh, "Come on, let's go."

Frankie: We'd driven past the exit to the airport a million and one times, never looked in that direct it wasn't even our vernacular. We, uh, never flown before in our lives.

Bootsy: So, we get on the plane and next thing I know, it went straight up in the air, Afros was going back.

Narrator: They arrived late to the gig and came upon a near-riot in the parking lot.

Bootsy: The people were kind of rowdy because the show was late. So we sneak around back, and walking in, we see some of our heroes, you know.

Narrator: Maceo Parker and his brother Melvin had been with James Brown since 1964, along with funk legends like Fred Wesley and Clyde Stubblefield.

Bootsy: So, there's Maceo, Fred Wesley, Clyde Stubblefield, and they lookin' awfully angry. You know, I remember passing the dressing room, and I saw Richard "Kush" Griffith had James Brown in a choke hold. I saw that and I was like, "Okay, I know something's going down."

Frankie: What was going on was it was a bit of a Mexican standoff between the guys and James because they weren't happy with the way James was doing some things. And, uh, they decided, you know, "Unless you change what's going on, we're not playing." So, they kind of had him over a barrel. But what they didn't realize was James had already prepared to have us come in.

Bootsy: So, after a while, Bobby Byrd took us over to Mr. Brown's dressing room, and he's sitting there, James freakin' Brown. And he started talking, "Ah-ha-ha, brother, I knew we we're gonna get you all down here. "Uh, I want you to, uh, I want you to come up on the set with me and I'm gonna count them songs off." And we're kind of lookin' at each other like, you know, 'cause we didn't understand what he was actually saying.