Read One : The Life and Music of James Brown (9781101561102) Online
Authors: R. J. Smith
This is what he listened to when he wasn’t on duty. Almost as revealing is the reading material found in Brown’s house after he died:
Cultural scholars will be pondering this material for years. Even more interesting, in the end, are other things Brown left scattered throughout his home. They weren’t there for strangers to appreciate; few strangers ever got near them.
One was a heavy set of leg irons, an artifact of the slave trade that he brought back from Senegal. Thick, corroded fetters that linked chattel together, oxidized restraints tethered to weights. This was for
him
to see.
Also arrayed on the premises, something more approaching the festive: cotton in every room. Sprigs in a vase arranged like trillium, balls settled in bowls, and stalks left on flat surfaces. It was a part of the South’s past, and part of Brown’s, too, for he picked it as a boy. He used cotton as decoration in his home, but really, it wasn’t so different from the irons. In the end they amounted to the same thing: a remembrance of who he was.
“I want to say one thing about the world,” Brown rasped. “Christ asked for justice and he got death. I want mercy, and I want to live like Moses, happily ever after.
“If we ask for justice, we’ll die right then. If we ask for mercy, we can live a while. Christ got us mercy. He paid the debt of justice.”
Everything in life was measured by what it could be traded for. The boxes of money went around and around. Here he was in a fine house, with his wife busy somewhere, his mistress in another room, his Viagra ready, and the Playboy Channel on. The boxes stayed in motion, and maybe they will forever, but when Brown came to rest, here he was, alone with his cotton and his irons.
“They can kill my body but they can’t kill my soul. God got that,” he once said. “I’ll serve humanity well, and I’m not angry about nothing. But I don’t want nobody to bother me. That’s not asking too much, is it?”
LIST OF INTERVIEWEES
Haji Ahkba, Steve Alaimo, Jeff Allen, Tony Allen, Emma and Leon Austin, Afrika Bambaataa, Amiri Baraka, Jack Bart, Toni Basil, Bobby Bennett, Steve Binder, Big Black, Cody Black, Darren Blase, Solomon Blatt Jr., Jerry Blavat, Chuck Brown, Ray Brown, Tomi Rae Brown, Tommy Brown, Young James Brown, Chris Burgan, David Butts, Emily Carder, James E. Carter, Devin Christy, Larry Cohen, Newton Collier, Bootsy Collins, Catfish Collins, Charles Connor, Albert Dallas, Gloria Daniel, Billy Davis, J. C. Davis, Ofield Dukes, Hollie Farris, Anthony Fillyau, Clayton Fillyau Jr., Sarah Byrd Giglio, Robert Gordon, Steve Halper, Erik Hargrove, Lee Hay, Roy Head, Stan Hertzman, Martha High, Hermon Hitson, Orangie Ray Hubbard, James Hudson, Keith Jenkins, Mack Johnson, Roosevelt Johnson, Leroy Jones, Willie Mae Keels, Gwen Kesler, Ronald Laster, Allyn Lee, Alan Leeds, Lola Love, Frank McCrae, Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, David Matthews, Hal Neely, Betty Jean Newsome, Lunetha Nolen, Bob Patton, Philip and Juanita Paul, Danny Ray, Jimie Railey, Levi Rasbury, Charles Reid, Roy Rifkind, Bobby Roach, Chuck Seitz, Ron Selico, Al Sharpton, James Shaw aka the Mighty Hannibal, Clay Smith, Charles Spurling, Henry Stallings, Frank Stanford,
Ralph Stanley, Seymour Stein, Henry Stone, Reppard Stone, Clyde Stubblefield, Bob Sullivan, Hamp Swain, Deanna Brown Thomas, Shawn Thomas, Robert Thompson, Frankie Waddy, Charles Walker, Melvin Webb, Fred Wesley, Otis Williams, Tony Wilson, Bob Young
OTHER INTERVIEWS USED
Bobby Byrd, conducted by Portia Maultsby, Archives of African American Music and Culture, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
Bobby Byrd, Emily Acree, Jim Andrews, Sarah Byrd Giglio, M. Carter, Sylvester Keels, Willie Mae Byrd Keels, J. C. Lawson, M. Perry, Nafloyd Scott, Johnny Terry, M. Tabor, conducted by Fred Hay, the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina
Bobby Byrd, Richard Kush Griffith, Danny Ray, conducted by Howard Burchette
Henry Glover, Colonel Jim Wilson, conducted by John Rumble, Frist Library, Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville, Tennessee
Hal Neely, conducted by Jeff Yaw
Jim Deak, conducted by Jon Hartley Fox
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
Stono Rebellion: “General Oglethorpe to the Accoutant, Mr. Harman Verelst,” Oct. 9 1739, in Candler, Allen D., etc.,
The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, vol. XXII, pt. 2
(Charles P. Byrd, 1913); Dena J. Epstein,
Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War
(University of Illinois Press, 1997); Mark M. Smith, ed.,
Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt
(University of South Carolina Press, 2005); Richard Cullen Rath, “Drums and Power: Ways of Creolizing Music in Coastal South Carolina and Georgia, 1730-1790,” in
Creolization in the Americas
, David Buisseret and Steven G. Reinhardt, eds. (TAMU Press, 2000).
South Carolina slaves marching into Augusta: Edward J. Cashin,
The Story of Augusta
(Richmond County Board of Education, 1980).
A Barnwell corn-shucking: William Cullen Bryant,
Letters of a Traveller; or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America
(Putnam, 1850). For drums and dance in South Carolina, see also, Henry William Ravenel, “Recollections of Southern Plantation Life,”
Yale Review
26, June 1936.
“The ‘One’ is derived from the Earth itself.” James Brown and Marc Eliot,
I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life in Soul
(New American Library, 2005).
Chapter One:
A CERTAIN ELEMENTAL WILDNESS
James Brown: James Brown and Bruce Tucker,
James Brown: The Godfather of Soul
(Macmillan, 1986); Geoff Brown,
The Life of James Brown: A Biography
(Omnibus Press, 2008); Don Rhodes,
Say It Loud!: My Memories of James Brown, Soul Brother No. 1
(The Lyons Press, 2008); James Sullivan,
The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America
(Gotham, 2008); Nelson George and Alan Leeds, eds.,
The James Brown Reader: Fifty Years of Writing About the Godfather of Soul
(Plume, 2008); Cynthia Rose,
Living in America: The Soul Saga of James Brown
(Serpent’s Tail, 1991). Also, chapters on Brown in Peter Guralnick,
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom
(Perennial, 1994); Gerri Hirschey,
Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music
(Southbank, 2006).
“Muddying for fish”: “The Red Sea,” in
Barnwell County Heritage
(Barnwell County Heritage Book Committee, 1994); Mamie Garvin Fields,
Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir
(Free Press, 1970); William A. Owens,
This Stubborn Soil
(The Lyons Press, 1999).
Bella Vista plantation: Michael J. Heitzler,
Goose Creek: A Definitive History vol. 1
(History Press, 2005). There were so many Behlings in the area, the
Atlanta Constitution
reported in 1901 that an effort was made to establish a colony for those with the name near Augusta, where they would make cheese and wine. Alas, it was never finished.
James Brown’s family tree: comes from Brown and Tucker,
The Godfather of Soul
; Bruce Tucker files; Deanna Brown Thomas interview.
“I was a stillborn kid.”
Godfather of Soul
; for another interpretation of the term, see Phillip Gourevitch, “Mr. Brown,”
The New Yorker
, July 29, 2002.
A Chosen One: Tucker files; Fred Daviss interview.
“I been dead all my life anyway.” Vernon Gibbs, “James Brown is Super Bad,” in
The James Brown Reader.
“He was a personal person and some things he didn’t want out.” Roosevelt Johnson interview.
“Something in the milk may not be clean.” Brown interview, Tucker files.
“She lived down in Smoakes.” Deanna Brown Thomas interview.
Living in a shack: Phillip T. South and Wesley Drotning,
Up From the Ghetto
(Washington Square Press, 1972).
Barnwell and the Barnwell District:
Barnwell County Heritage
; Tom Downey,
Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790-1860
(Louisiana State University Press, 2005); John Caldwell Guilds ed.,
Simms: A Literary Life
(University
of Arkansas Press, 1995); Richard David Brooks and David Colin Crass,
A Desperate Poor Country: History and Settlement Patterning on the Savannah River Site, Aiken and Barnwell Counties, South Carolina
(University of South Carolina, 1991); Margaret Spann Lawrence,
The History of Bamberg County, South Carolina, Commemorating 100 Years 1897-1997
(The Reprint Company, 2003); F. Stuart Chapin et al.,
In the Shadow of a Defense Plant: A Study of Urbanization in Rural South Carolina
(University of North Carolina, 1954); Steve Gaither, William Henry, J. W. Joseph, Mary Beth Reed, and Mark T. Swanson,
Savannah River Site at Fifty
(U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002); Lucius Sydney O’Berry,
Ellenton, South Carolina: My Life…Its Death
(University of South Carolina, 1999); Tonya A. Browder and Richard D. Brooks,
Memories of Home: Reminiscences of Ellenton
(University of South Carolina Press, 1996); Stephanie McCurry,
Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country
(Oxford University Press, 1997); Jean Martin Flynn,
A History of the Barnwell First Baptist Church and Antebellum Barnwell
(Barnwell First Baptist Church, 2002); “Court Orders New Trial For 17-Year-Old Farmer in S.C.,”
Pittsburgh Courier
, July 16, 1942.
South Carolina landscape: Walter B. Edgar,
South Carolina: A History
(University of South Carolina Press, 1998); Edgar,
The South Carolina Encyclopedia
(University of South Carolina Press, 2006); Downey,
Planting a Capitalist South; The WPA Guide to the Palmetto State
(University of South Carolina Press, 1988).
Newcomers known as “crackers”: Cashin,
The Story of Augusta
; Cashin, “Paternalism in Augusta,” in
Paternalism in a Southern City: Race, Religion and Gender in Augusta
,
Georgia
, Edward J. Cashin and Glenn T. Eskew, eds. (University of Georgia Press, 2001); Charles Woodmason,
The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant
(University of North Carolina Press, 1969); William Bartram,
The Travels of William Bartram
(University of Georgia Press, 1998).
A South Carolina tradition of violence: Michael Stephen Hindus,
Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767-1878
(University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Jack Kenny Williams,
Vogues in Villainy: Crime and Retribution in Ante-Bellum South Carolina
(University of South Carolina Press, 1959); Fox Butterfield,
All God’s Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1995); John Hammond Moore,
Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in South Carolina, 1880-1920
(University of South Carolina Press, 2006); Orville Vernon Burton,
In My Father’s
House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina
(University of North Carolina Press, 1987); C. Vann Woodward, “District of Devils,”
New York Review of Books
, October 10, 1985; Elliot J. Gorn, “Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry,”
The American Historical Review
, vol. 90, February 1985; Mark M. Smith, “‘All Is Not Quiet In Our Hellish County’: Facts, Fiction, Politics, and Race—The Ellenton Riot of 1876,”
South Carolina Historical Magazine
, vol. 95 no. 2 (April 1994).
“We live in the fields among the growing cotton and the green corn.” Ben Robertson,
Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory
(University of South Carolina Press, 1983).
The Lynching at Broxton Bridge: “An Ugly Lynching,”
Atlanta Constitution
, December 6, 1895; “The Colleton Horror,”
Atlanta Constitution,
January 11, 1896; “Letting Light on a Lynching,” February 21, 1896; “They Were Dumb,” February 24, 1896; “White Men May Hang,”
Atlanta Constitution,
October 18, 1896; “Rose Told the Story Again,”
Atlanta Constitution,
October 29, 1896; “Two Negroes Beaten to Death,”
The New York Times,
December 6, 1895; “A Failure of Justice,”
The New York Times,
March 1, 1896.
Eight lynched in Barnwell: “Eight Men Lynched by Maskers,”
Atlanta Constitution,
December 29, 1889: “Eight Hanging Bodies,”
The New York Times,
December 30, 1889; “Negroes Shot to Death,”
Chicago Daily Tribune,
December 29, 1889.
African Americans in South Carolina: I. A. Newby,
Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina From 1895 to 1968
(University of South Carolina Press, 1973); George B. Tindall,
South Carolina Negroes 1877-1900
(University of South Carolina Press, 1952); Richard Zuczek,
State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina
(University of South Carolina Press, 2009); Philip G. Grose,
South Carolina at the Brink: Robert McNair and the Politics of Civil Rights
(University of South Carolina Press, 2006); Kari Frederickson, “‘The Slowest State’ and ‘Most Backward Community’: Racial Violence in South Carolina and Federal Civil-Rights Legislation, 1946-1948,”
South Carolina Historical Magazine
98, April 1997; Paul Lofton, “The Columbia Black Community in the 1930s,” in
The Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association,
1984; Robert W. Bagnall, “Light and Shadows in the South,”
The Crisis,
April 1932; Edwin D. Hoffman, “The Genesis of the Modern Movement for Equal Rights in South Carolina, 1930-1939,”
Journal of Negro History
44, 1959.