Tales from the Tour Bus - The Vickery Family

James Brown Part 1

Narrator: When Aaron and Zola were kids, hearing James Brown on TV and radio become more personal to them.

Alan Leeds: James Brown was just a madman, and even that's being polite. I mean, he had the most extreme mood swings of anybody I've ever seen.

Narrator: Alan Leeds was an 18-year-old apprentice disc jockey in Richmond, Virginia, when he first met James Brown.

Alan: James Brown loved disc jockeys more than anything on the planet, because they controlled his his life, because the playlists of radio stations were not regulated, so I could play a James Brown record every 15 minutes if I wanted to. And he knew that. It was July of 1965, and he was coming to town for a show. I badgered the local promoter for the concert that night to let me go interview James Brown. Now, at this point, James was beyond going to the radio station. You had to go to him. He was in a suite at a downtown hotel, and the program director said, "I want to send this kid over to do an interview "that we can play on the air to hype the ticket sales, and so on," and he agreed to do it. So, I went up and knocked on the door of his suite a very attractive young lady answered the door, and she just kind of stared at me, didn't know what to make of a pimply faced white kid 'cause this was the age where he really hadn't crossed over, yet, to pop radio. But black radio, he ruled it. So, finally, she said "I'll see if Mr. Brown is ready. " And I stood at the door. And I'm shaking, just literally you know, shaking. She came back a couple minutes later and escorted me into the suite. The sun's coming through the window, and it's almost blindingly bright in the bedroom, and all I see is this guy, a big king-sized bed, laying back like a king, propped up on about ten pillows, just ten pillows, and it's all covered with hair. And in the middle, there's this tiny, little face, and this gruff voice says, "Hey, kid." And he just kept looking at me. I think he was fascinated with the fact that a white kid was working at this black radio station. This is my idol, this is the King of Soul, this is the guy. Well, let's do it, you know. I started askin' him questions about his childhood days.

Scot Brown: James Brown grows up in the context of segregation, and in that kind of environment, which is very, very, very damaging to a young person.

Narrator: Dr. Scot Brown, no relation, is a professor of history and African-American studies, and also a self-professed scholar of the funk. He teaches kids today about the journey of James Brown. How he walked out of the backwoods of South Carolina for a chance at life in Augusta, Georgia.

Scot: Augusta was a kind of sin city of sorts, where the sale of sex and the sale of drugs is able to move across even the highest wall erected to separate the races.

R.J. Smith: James was raised in a whorehouse in Augusta, Georgia. That shaped a lot of his worldview as an adult.

Narrator: R.J. Smith is a writer, and a columnist for The Village Voice, who also interviewed the Godfather of Soul for a book about his life.

R.J.: James always thought that his mom abandoned him. But Joe, his father, was an incredibly brutal person. He threw her out a window, apparently, once, while James was watching.

Alan: He was taught very early not to trust. Here's a guy who was an only child, and his mother left. Not the father, his mother left. Put it this way: if you can't trust your mother, who can you trust? He told me his people had absolutely no money, and whatever money they did have, came from him.

R.J.: During World War II, there was a big military base in Augusta. Soldiers would toss coins on the street to pay James Brown to dance for them on the street corner. Really, the foundation of James Brown's music is his dancing.

Nelson George: That's how Brown created funk, in a way, because the music was tied into his movement. Everything was tied into his body.

Narrator: His nickname wasn't just a glib catchphrase created by some promoter. James Brown, from the beginning, was the hardest working man in show business.