More Famous Flames as His Office Burns
God had a special job for me. He gave me a talent to relate to people of all cultures. I found that the common denominator among people was love. Because regardless of all the obstacles we fight, the social problems and the poverty problems, it all boils down to the love factor. And I believe I was able to create that in my life.
—James Brown January 1991 Introduction to Star Time
So many good things that JB tried to create with his fame and money were just not meant to be, such as the destruction by fire of his ultradeluxe Third World nightclub in October 1973. That same sense of loss, of watching a dream and lots of hard work go up in smoke, happened to him again years later when firefighters responded to a blaze at his Augusta office complex about 9:30 p.m. on Friday, April 28, 2000.
And even more crushing for JB than the personal loss was the fact that arson was behind the destruction of his James Brown Enterprises offices.
“What has occurred really is an outrage,” said his attorney and longtime friend, “Buddy” Dallas told Augusta Chronicle reporter Johnny Edwards.
Reportedly destroyed in the blaze were master tapes of unreleased recordings, including sessions taped at Studio South in Augusta as well as a live concert at the Apollo Theater in New York City.
Other irreplaceable items was the preacher’s robe that JB wore in The Blues Brothers movie, capes worn in concerts, gold records, detailed information about his concert tours and the programming of WAAW-FM radio station that he had bought, a photo of the Apollo astronauts who played “I Got You” in space, a pair of boxing gloves from the set of Rocky IV, other priceless photos, and a ceremonial American Indian headdress that was given to him by the Connecticut Pequot tribe that made him an honorary member.
Lieutenant G. B. Hannan, an Augusta-Richmond County Fire Department investigator, said in his findings published in the Augusta Chronicle that a fire accelerant—”probably petroleum-based”—was found in several places in the halls and rooms. The front door was discovered to have been left unlocked and a burglar alarm didn’t go off.
“This will break Mr. Brown’s heart,” said Colonel Jim Vause, president of Liberty Security, which was handling protection for Brown. “He gives so much to the community. It would break his heart if someone did this intentionally. There was a lot of his life stored in that building.” Vause later reported that firefighters managed to save some valuables but he did not know which ones.
Brown was given the bad news as he stepped off a stage from a concert in Virginia. Reportedly, his first question was if anyone had been hurt.
Upon returning to Augusta, Brown looked over the damage and said it wasn’t as bad as he expected. Fire investigator Hannan later said—that had firefighters not extinguished the blaze so quickly—authorities might not have discovered it was the work of foul play. Hannan added, “They had planned for us not to see the things that we see now.”
Brown offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the arsonist or arsonists. Brown’s attorney, Dallas, had supper at an Augusta restaurant with the singer on the night of May 3 to celebrate Brown’s sixty-seventh birthday. Dallas said afterward, “Knowing him as I know him, I have been able to sense the intense personal hurt.”
That intense personal hurt would turn into an even deeper emotional experience for JB when he learned a few weeks later who actually had done the horrible deed. His nightclub fire had produced no known culprits even though arson had been suspected. But thirty-nine-year-old Richard Glenn, the head of security for James Brown Enterprises and the son of his cousin, childhood buddy, and vice president of operations, William Glenn, was eventually charged with and convicted of setting the fire.
Major Ken Autry of the Richmond County Sheriff’s Department said that Glenn had started the fire to destroy documents connecting him to a forged $75,000 check that Glenn had stolen from his boss.
Investigator Richard Roundtree said Glenn took a check for $75,000 issued on April 7 by the Pepsi soft drink company for an endorsement, opened an account at a Georgia Bank and Trust branch in Augusta, and on April 14 deposited the check. Between the deposit and the fire Glenn withdrew $35,000 from the account and deposited it into his personal account at Regions Bank.
At Glenn’s home, investigators seized $35,000. They also seized another $11,000 in two bank accounts. Glenn subsequently was charged with arson, first degree forgery, and theft by taking. It was Glenn’s third forgery charge, and he had served time in prison in 1996 and 1997 for violating probation from his 1992 forgery conviction.
“Buddy” Dallas told Johnny Edwards of the Augusta Chronicle that Glenn had worked more than five years for Brown as head of security for James Brown Enterprises and, to a lesser extent, for Brown’s personal security. “This is incredible,’’ Dallas said, “How does one bite the hand that feeds him? . . . This will be hard for [JB] to believe, but then I’m sure it was hard for Julius Caesar, too.”
In late September, Brown announced that he was planning to move his offices into the former First Federal Savings and Loan Association building on the northeast corner of 10th and Broad streets. The forty-year-old, four-story building in more recent years had been used by the Bankers First Corporation and later by U.S. District Court. Brown was said to have paid approximately $1 million for the building. His radio station, WAAW-FM was located a block away in space leased in the former H. L. Green building.
For whatever reason, Brown never moved into the building.
In mid-October 2000, Brown was planning a triumphant return to the Augusta-Richmond County Civic Center. Earlier in the year, he had taken the same show to France, England, Germany, Morocco, Sweden, and Japan.
Brown told Steven Uhles, entertainment writer for the Chronicle, “We go around the world and sell out everywhere we go, but Augusta hasn’t seen James Brown’s show in a long time.” He later added, “I want the people to realize that we do a clean show; a show without vulgarity. This is a show for the whole family. This is a wholesome show, and we’re proud to be a part of that.”
He talked about his influence on other music stars, telling Uhles, “We started it all. We started hip-hop, disco, all the rappers. Everybody is into James Brown. . . . When Frank Sinatra, God bless him, was still around, George Michael called him and told him he had just cut a James Brown record. Mr. Sinatra told him, ‘That’s not new. Everybody copies James Brown.’”
But the triumphant return to Augusta was not meant to be. Only seventeen hundred tickets sold for the proposed concert in the nine-thousand-seat facility.
Uhles, in a later article headlined “To Its Shame, Augusta Snubs Musical Legend,” noted that Brown’s concert was competing that night with a gospel show next door in Bell Auditorium and a rock show at Augusta State University, but, even if all those people had come to the civic center, it still would be only half full.
“I have to wonder what was more important to Augustans than seeing Mr. Brown, an artist who sells out much larger venues everywhere he plays and has built a reputation on spirited live performances. Was ‘Must-See TV’ that important?” Uhles asked his readers.
“Leading his instrument-toting troops into battle like a funky field marshal, the gold bedecked Mr. Brown and his scarlet-clad warriors leave an audience gasping,” Uhles wrote. “An artist who recognizes that you are only as good as those around you, Mr. Brown’s current company consists of crack players who gel as a band and function admirably when asked to solo. But, of course, we wouldn’t know about that in Augusta, now would we?”
Civic Center general manager Reggie Williams also remarked, “I can’t figure Augusta out. The crowd at his concert was 75 percent white. The next night, at the Lynx [ice hockey] game, it was announced that Mr. Brown would not be performing the national anthem, and the crowd cheered. I can’t figure it out.”
In November, Brown’s spirits were lifted by his annual turkey giveaway at Dyess Park on Wednesday, November 22, 2000. More than three hundred people lined up by 10:30 a.m. for the more than eight hundred turkeys donated by fifteen organizations and individuals, including Comcast Cable TV, Suntrust Bank, A World of Music instrument dealer, and Augusta Mayor Bob Young and his wife, Gwen Fulcher Young.
Brown told Clarissa J. Walker of the Chronicle that his commitment to feeding needy souls at Thanksgiving was more important than whatever some Augustans might think of him. “People need to eat first. It’s God’s temple, and we need to keep it in good shape. . . . We just love people, and we love what we are doing. We thank God for people are doing good things for us. We can’t thank them enough. The more we give, the more we receive.”
Joann McBride, a resident of the Sunset Homes housing project, said, “I think that’s lovely and it helps people who are in need. I think that [Brown] is a loving person for doing what he is doing, giving to the neighborhood. Regardless of what people say, he is still standing out there, still being strong for us.”
Just a few weeks later, JB was wearing a Christmas stocking hat and his red leather suit and cowboy boots in the Imperial Theatre on Friday, December 22, 2000, to pass out toys to needy children as he had done for the past seven years. This time, JB decided to do more than just give away toys. He also wanted to perform for the children, many of whom were seeing the Godfather of Soul for the first time.
The theater’s curtain opened and JB broke into a medley of his hits including “Please, Please, Please” and “Merry Christmas Baby.” He even brought some of the children onstage to show off their own dancing skills. He loved the attention, as many children ran up to hug him. “God makes me do this,” he said. “We’ve got to raise money so we can keep doing this fine work.”
According to estimates, organizers helped Brown distribute toys that day to more than one thousand children. Among those passing out toys were Brown’s daughter, Deanna, and his longtime friend, show emcee, and cape thrower, Danny Ray.
Sixty-eight-year-old Brown spent the summer of 2001 heavily touring with show dates in June in Los Angeles, Monterey, and Anaheim, California; Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska; Merrillville and Indianapolis, Indiana; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Sterling Heights, Michigan; and Ottawa, Canada.
He spent the month of August overseas with shows in Brno, Chezkoslavakia; Istanbul, Turkey; Gosport and Aberdeen, United Kingdom; Cologne, Germany; Monte Carlo, Monaco; Colmar, France; Leuven, Belgium; and Ahaus, Germany.
Elif Crawford, Brown’s personal office assistant for his last eight years, recalls that JB never let up on his expectations of those working for him and those who had other dealings with him. “There was no room for saying, ‘I’m sorry,’” she recalled. “You had to be one step ahead of him for getting things done.”
Papa again had a brand new bag that year thanks to the collaboration of a young man who truly loved James Brown and was in obvious awe of his persona and music and —that young man was Derrick Monk, an Oakland, California, native who had moved to Augusta about ten years earlier. His résumé included winning talent night on the televised Showtime at the Apollo program; doing production work with rapper MC Hammer and the rhythm and blues group Immature; and producing Brown’s 1998 classic funk album I’m Back.
Monk produced The Merry Christmas Album of seasonal songs that he and Brown cowrote, and, in early 2001, he cowrote and produced Brown recording a song called “School In, Peace” in which Brown repeats the phrase, “Killing is out. / School is in.” It was inspired by news reports of students being killed by other students and was intended for an upcoming Brown album called The Next Step.
I had a memorable, unexpected encounter with JB that fall. I hadn’t spoken to him in several years—not since the Adrienne Brown Christmas blowup.
Then on Tuesday, October 2, I walked behind the buildings of the Chronicle and Morris Communications Corporation to put some papers in my car, which was parked in a lot behind the Imperial Theatre. There, near the theater’s rear stage door, I saw JB standing with about ten other guys. I impulsively yelled out “JB !!”
He glanced in my direction with a startled look and then broke into a big grin. I headed over to him with a big smile and shook his hand. And do you know what his first words to me after those divided years were? He asked enthusiastically, “How’s your father doing?” I told him that my dad was doing well and I just had been with him the previous Sunday.
He then turned to the guys, who were his band members, and said, “This is Mr. Rhodes. He saw me in Vietnam.” James never got over that I was there for his Long Binh USO show. He then introduced every one of the band members by name, and told me to drop by his rehearsals that were under way in the Imperial whenever I wanted.
So, about 4:45 p.m. that same day and also the next day, I ended up sitting on metal folding chairs on the stage in the wings, just off stage left, between his show announcer and cape thrower Danny Ray and his longtime childhood friend Leon Austin, who had taught JB, the “right way to play a piano.”
They weren’t the only cool folks present in the Imperial that afternoon for the band rehearsal. Tomi Rae Hynie was there, looking after her and James’s son, James Joseph Brown II, born a few months earlier on June 11. JB told me that he and Tomi Rae would wed soon. “Don’t forget to send me an invitation to that,” I replied. The sixty-eight-year-old entertainer beamed at the infant sitting in a child’s carseat beside his redheaded mother and remarked, “I’m very proud of him.”
During the rehearsal, Hynie sang a rocking version of “Can’t Turn You Loose” and an emotionally charged version of “This Bitter Earth.” Other highlights for me that afternoon was JB doing “Please, Please, Please” and “Killing Is Out” (“for the Chronicle,” as he would say).
A special surprise at the rehearsal were Bobby and Vicki Byrd. I had not crossed their path since being introduced to them by Little Richard several years earlier on the opening night of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Both were looking great and happy and said they were back doing some show dates with Brown’s revue.
Also at the rehearsal Bobby sang “I Know You Got Soul” and “Get On Up” (which he had cowritten with Brown). Vicki would sing the Otis Redding-Aretha Franklin classic “Respect” in her wonderful voice that made it clear why JB always said she was the best female vocalist ever in his bands.
“We got our big start in Macon, thanks to Little Richard, whom we met in Toccoa,” Bobby told me during a rehearsal break. “I think music has a lot of do with Mr. Brown and Little Richard being so happy and still being so strong today. That’s what they live by. I don’t think there’s anything else they ever wanted to do. Nothing but music.”
Emcee Danny Ray even got to rehearse some, saying in that familiar voice of his, “The James Brown Enterprises proudly presents the Jaaaaaaaaymes Brown Show. Featuring Miss Tomi Rae, the Bittersweets, R. J., Miss Sara Reya, and, of, course, the Godfather of Soul himself, Mr. Jaaaaaaaaaaaymes Brown. Standing in the spotlight are a group of young men who have given the world some of the greatest soul talent. So, put your hands together and welcome the Soul Generals.” The band then launched into a funky number.
Brown turned to me several times during that rehearsal and talked directly to me while most of the band members, dancers, and singers watched. It was an odd feeling. And, quite possibly just in my honor, Brown got Byrd to sing some of the old stuff that they sang in their beginning Famous Flames days in Toccoa, including “One Mint Julep” and “Deep Blue Sea.”
“This is what we used to do called Do Wop years ago. I mean we really had to sing,” Brown said before going into “Don’t Do It” with the lines, “If what they are saying is true, / that you and I are through, / if you leave me pretty baby, / I’ll have bread without no meat. / Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”
He then added, “That’s the 5 Royales. A lot of our stuff came from the 5 Royales ’cause them cats were gospel singers, but they pronounced it different. . . . We’re doing these things because I think it’s a little nice to explain what we are about. . . . We really had to sing then.”
After the rehearsal, JB wanted to talk about his new single that was being referred to in the press as Killing Is Out, School Is In. Brown said of the kids against kids violence that inspired the song, “‘I’ve never seen it this bad. I pray for the families.”
He then introduced me to the song’s producer and cowriter, Derrick Monk, who said, “This record is about the violence and terrorism going on in America, but we’re focusing more on our future, which is the youth. Mr. Brown has been doing this song everywhere in concert, and the response has been great. People are singing and chanting it back. It’s unbelievable the way it’s catching on like wildfire.”
Just a few weeks earlier, JB had presented President George W. Bush with a T-shirt proclaiming, “Killing Is Out—School Is In—James Brown.” The presentation was made during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House honoring Brown and other black musicians. The Imperial rehearsal took place just a few weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Brown told me that he had been getting overwhelming responses with his song Living in America that he had recorded in 1986.
“PolyGram Records wants me to record it over again,” Brown said. “My band, led by Hollie Farris, now plays it better than the way it was originally cut.” Farris was standing nearby and he told me, “You should hear him [Brown] sing ‘God Bless America.’” Brown turned to Farris and said, “Oh, you liked that the other night? You going to put an arrangement on that for me?”
The bandleader smiled and said, “Sure,” to which Brown said, “We’ve done ‘God Bless America’ before, but we have become really conscious of what is happening (in this country), and we really did it right the other night. You see, most people in America still aren’t conscious of the fact that we’re at war. We’re at war! W-A-R! War. We’ve got to change our whole program. What our country did not do, we’ve got to do it now. Every American—regardless of his origin, where he came from—every American today are kin to each other. And we’ve got to come together and do something about it.”
Before that afternoon was over, Brown as usual told me to be sure and say hello to my Aiken County building inspector father, Ollen. I held up my cassette tape recorder and said, “You tell him,” and Brown went, “Mr. Rhodes, this is James Brown saying hello. I’ve got your big head son here. You know I love him, and I love you and I thank you for all the fine things you did for me and my home.”
James Brown ended 2001 with one of the greatest shows of his life, and I was lucky to be there for it: his fourth marriage ceremony. He was sixty-eight and his new bride and featured vocalist, Tomi Rae Hynie, was thirty-two. Their son was six months old and was held by Tomi Rae’s mother during the ceremony.
My partner, Eddie Smith, and I were right behind her, and sitting in the folding chairs on our row next to the sunken bar were Augusta mayor Bob Young and his wife, Gwen, and to their immediate left Bobby and Vicki Byrd.
The forty-five-minute ceremony in Brown’s Beech Island home was conducted by the Reverend Larry Fryer (remember his role in counseling James and Adrienne Brown in the final years of Adrienne’s life?).
Tomi Rae wore a white satin gown with a flowing train, large white bridal veil, and held a bouquet of white roses. She later told the National Enquirer, “It was a beautiful wedding. As we made our vows, our baby son looked up at us and gurgled with joy. I’m on Cloud Nine.”
JB was dressed in black shoes, a pinstriped black suit with tails going almost to the floor, black vest, dark purple shirt, and black bow tie with two white roses in his left lapel. His hair, as usual, was immaculately coiffed.
The wedding reception at the home was lavish with a large buffet of salmon, shrimp, steak, and other goodies. It was a joyous affair with Buzz Clifford and Derrick Monk performing along with great organ playing by Leon Austin.
Just as he had done at the Green Jacket restaurant years earlier for the anniversary celebration of his friends Flo and Don Carter, JB took the microphone early in the evening and sang to his bride the Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne song “Time after Time,” which contains the lyrics, “I only know what I know, / the passing years will show, / you’ve kept my love so young, so new. / And time after time, / you’ll hear me say that I’m, / so lucky to be loving you.”
Apparently the marriage did not receive the approval of the entire Brown family. One of JB’s daughters was overheard telling another guest, “I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.”
Just a few days after the marriage, JB and Tomi Rae were at the Imperial Theatre on December 19 for yet another toy giveaway to needy children. They looked extremely happy and left soon afterward for a honeymoon in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles before heading for a New Year’s Eve show with the Soul Generals and other Brown revue members in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Unfortunately, the happiness would not last.