Little Richard didn’t have a hit record yet, but he was still the biggest thing in Georgia and in some surrounding states, too. When we went to catch his show at Bill’s Rendezvous, we couldn’t believe it. He carried a big band, the Upsetters, of maybe eleven pieces, he had a group of singers called the Dominions, and he had himself—hair piled higher than Billy Wright’s, who he got the style from, and all that makeup. Even so, the Rendezvous was our turf, and we were determined to cut him if we could.
Richard gave his usual wild show, beating up the piano, jumping around the stage, flirting with the audience the way he would, his band pumping out the music. But watching him, I knew I had a big advantage over him because I could really dance. The crowd loved him, but at intermission they started patting for us, yelling at us, “Go on up and sing, go on up and sing!”
That was all we needed. We jumped up on the stage; Nafloyd plugged in his guitar; somebody else took over the Upsetters’ drums; Baby Roy sat at the piano; and we tore into our act. When Richard heard us, he came running out from behind the counter where he’d been talking to Delois and started screeching, “What’s happening? What’s happening?” He saw us and then shook his head, like we were no good, but we put so many moves on him up there on stage that he started screaming, “Get ’em off! Get ’em off!” Man, he was peepin’ and hidin’ til he didn’t know what to do. We almost ran him out of town, we were so bad.
After the show Richard said he didn’t want to have nothing to do with James Brown. “You’re the onliest man I’ve seen who has everything,” he said. He walked away, still shaking his head, and left us standing there with Fats Gonder, who ran his band. Fats told us about Clint Brantly, Richard’s manager over in Macon, and told us to get in touch with him. Clint owned a nightclub called the Two Spot, booked R & B shows into the Macon Auditorium, and handled several acts besides Richard. Fats thought that Clint could help us get wider exposure but, really, Richard was behind it, even though he walked away. I have to give him the credit, because it really helped us.
I was ready to go. We had done all we could from Toccoa; we had even cut several records, although most people don’t realize it. We hardly realized it ourselves. All of them were for little local labels like NRC out of Greenville; we cut “So Long” and a few other things for them. We did things on tape at radio stations and gave the tapes to these small companies, and they transferred them to plastic. Piano Red introduced us to a small label in Atlanta where we did some records we were going to use to advertise ourselves. We didn’t even know whether the companies were selling the records or not. We didn’t care; we just wanted to be on stage in front of all those women.
Now that I was more ambitious, the logical place to move on to was Macon, which had a very active music scene. But it was a delicate situation. Barry had done a lot for us and hadn’t gotten much in return, and he couldn’t leave town because of his funeral business. But Barry was a really good man; he told us he didn’t want to hold us back, and he even offered to drive us to Macon if we left. There was a parole problem, too. If Clint liked us and we wound up staying in Macon, I would be violating my parole. With the parole thing, they had me in slavery—and kept me that way for ten years—but after a lot of paperwork and promises, I was given the name of a parole officer in Macon and cleared to go.
The hardest part of all was separating from my family. By this time we had another son, Terry. Since Macon wasn’t but about three hours away, I figured I could get back and forth pretty easy. Plus, in the long run I thought I could provide for my family a lot better as a singer than as a janitor. So I decided to try it.
Clint sent us gas money, and Barry drove us down in the black Ford. We went straight to the Two Spot to audition. There was no piano, only a guitar that Nafloyd borrowed from the house guitar player. We had heard that Clint really liked gospel, so instead of singing anything popular we decided to do a sacred number. A song we could really tear up was the one I taught the group at our first rehearsal, “Looking for My Mother.” During the group’s short gospel career we had developed a little routine where we walked around like we were doing what the words said: “When I get to heaven, I’m going to look for my mother.” It brought tears to Clint’s eyes. After that he would always say, “I had ’em sing that song, ‘Looking for My Mother,’ and they looked all up under the tables, all behind the stove, and all behind the refrigerator. Never did find her.”
Clint took us on and we moved into Dean’s Hotel, where I shared a room with Johnny Terry. Clint’s operation now included Little Richard, a band led by a fella from Florida named Percy, and us. Richard and Percy had been with him longer and were already established in the area, so he paid more attention to them at first. We hung around the Two Spot and saw them come in, get their bookings, pick up their gas money, and go. We didn’t have day jobs, so we were anxious to start making some money. One day Clint told us he had booked us at the Club 15, a big juke joint out by the river, and he wanted to advertise the gig on the radio, but first, he said, we needed something to make us special.
“Y’all are named the Flames, right?” he said.
We said yeah.
“We’ve got to do something about that,” he said, looking disturbed. “Just the Flames?”
We said that was all.
He thought about it for a minute, then said, “Okay, we’ll put ‘Famous’ in front of it since y’all aren’t from around here. We won’t say where you are from, we’ll just say you’re the Famous Flames.”
When we got to the Club 15 we found out we were on the bill with another group. They had all this nice equipment, new horns, a real drum kit, real amplifiers, real everything. We still had our big field drum, our little bitty amp and guitar, and Bobby was still whistling some of the instrumental parts. The other group was smooth, and when we had to follow them we were worried. We did all our songs, I did every dance I knew, and the others did the dance routines I had worked out with them. The audience wouldn’t let us off the stage, and we played the rest of the night, while the other group watched.
The next weekend we were right back there, and the weekend after, too. When we told Clint we were anxious to get out on the road, he said we needed to open up Macon first. But an incident at the Club 15 almost closed the town for me for good.
Nafloyd’s girl, who had come to visit him, was helping to collect money at the door with Fats. He had left Little Richard and was moving over into helping Clint manage the acts. Some fella started messing with Nafloyd’s girl, so Nafloyd jumped over the railing around the stage and snatched his girl away. We thought something funny was going on with the crowd anyway, so we stopped in the middle of a song and grabbed something to use to defend ourselves. I followed Nafloyd over the rail and punched the fella. Before a big fight could get going, though, the police, who were outside already because of the crowd, swarmed over us. They grabbed me right off. When things settled down they ran a check on me and found out I was on parole. I wasn’t supposed to be in a club that sold liquor, but instead of taking me to jail and then shipping me back to Toccoa and prison, they waited until Clint got there. He was one of the most well-known black people in town—even the police respected him—so he was able to squash it.
During the time we were gigging only on weekends, we drove back to Toccoa and spent weekdays there. I was able to be with Velma and my two boys and kind of keep my family life going as best I could. I don’t think Velma’s father liked the situation much, though, and that caused some friction. I had always felt he wanted me to be a yes-man for him, and I wouldn’t be a yes-man.
Back in Macon, our gigs were improving. Little Richard was working farther and farther away, and we were taking over some of his old spots. He still didn’t have a real hit—just some blues records he’d made for Peacock—and he was still washing dishes at the Greyhound bus station when he wasn’t performing. He was steadily getting bigger, but we were gaining on him. One night we replaced him for a gig at Emory University in Atlanta, and Emory was ours after that.
We were working outside the state, too, and that could have caused some problems with my Macon parole officer, Donald Walters. He was a good man. I saw him once a month for the first four months I was in Macon, and after that he left me alone. He could see I wasn’t any kind of a criminal that needed watching. When it came time for me to go out of state, he gave his permission right away. He wasn’t supposed to do it, but he did it anyway. For the rest of my time on parole I sent him a postcard once a month from wherever I was. He never even made me meet with him again.
Not too long after I got to Macon, some people started hitting on Richard about recording for them instead of Peacock. Eventually Bumps Blackwell got him for Art Rupe’s Specialty label out of Los Angeles. After “Tutti Frutti” broke, Richard left Macon for California, left everybody without saying a word—Mr. Brantly, the Dominions, the Upsetters, and a lot of bookings. Mr. Brantly asked me to fulfill Richard’s dates. He put me together with the Upsetters and the Dominions and sent me out as Little Richard. Meantime, Byrd and the fellas were doing the Famous Flames bookings. I was getting paid as Richard while Bobby was getting paid as me. I guess I did about fifteen of Richard’s dates. I’d come out and do “Tutti Frutti” and all those things, and then I’d do some Midnighters’ stuff, some Roy Brown, and even “Please Please Please.” I guess the audience thought I was really Richard. Then, near the end of the show, I’d say, “I’m not Little Richard. My name is James.” After a few shows like that, Fats, who also went on the tour, started announcing me as Little James. I didn’t let that stay too long, either.
Back in Macon me and the Flames would cut every group that came through. Pretty soon the word got around, and then nobody would let us on stage—the Drifters, the Midnighters, nobody. They had records out and were afraid to let us get on stage when we showed up at their performances. That was when I realized we had to get a record out on a good label, and it had to be our own material. First, we needed a demo. There was no question that we would do “Please Please Please”; it was our own stuff and we’d been performing and perfecting it for almost two years. We had seen the hysterical reactions of audiences when we sang it, and I had complete confidence in the song. But before we could do it, I almost wound up going back to prison to serve the rest of my time.
I was driving from Macon to Toccoa, taking some clothes to my kids, when somewhere between Madison and Athens a fella on a tractor pulled across the road in front of me, and I hit the back of the tractor. It threw the man off and hurt him, but not real bad, I don’t think. I got help for him, and with the help came the police. When they found out I was on parole, I was taken to jail in whatever little town we were near. After I was in the lockup for a few days, a fella from Clayton County came to see me.
“Brown,” he said, “I represent the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole, and it’s my duty to inform you that a board arrest warrant was issued for you on October 28, 1955.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Your parole will be revoked, and you will be returned to the state penal system to serve out the remainder of your original sentence.”
“But, sir,” I said, “that’s ten more years. I have a family.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Since I’d gotten out of GJTI I’d had a couple of close calls, but I thought this was it. And I knew I wouldn’t be going back to a juvenile institution; I would probably be going to Reidsville. All I could think about was that I wouldn’t be able to see my family, just like the time I’d been in prison before. On the third day Mr. Brandy showed up. He had arranged to have me released in his custody until the thing was decided. For the next couple of weeks he did everything he could to explain to the parole people that it was an accident, that I was only taking clothes to my kids. He told them he would be responsible. Finally, on November 18, they withdrew the warrant.
After that, I didn’t waste any time making my demo. We arranged to use the studio of radio station WIBB, an AM daytimer in Macon. Mr. Maxwell, the owner, didn’t even charge us. Big Saul, one of the disc jockeys, was at the control board. With Nafloyd on guitar and Bobby on piano, we all gathered around one microphone. I was so short I had to stand on a Co’-Cola crate. We cut loose and just tore it up. When Saul played it back for us, it sounded very good, but I wasn’t satisfied. I insisted on recording it several times until I felt it was right. I don’t think anybody really knew what I was doing, but I always knew. I didn’t know that I knew, but I always knew.
Clint took the tape around, and everybody refused it—Specialty, Chess, Duke, and other independent labels. While they were all turning it down, Hamp Swain, a jock on WBML, began playing the tape on the radio. It became the most requested song around Macon, even though you couldn’t buy a record of it. Hamp didn’t care whether there was a record or not; he played the song constantly, and our bookings got better and better. Hamp knew it was a good song; the people knew it was a good song; and I knew it was a good song, no matter what the record companies said. I was sure that if I could get it to the right person, it would succeed. I took a copy and drove to Southland Record Distributing Company, sixty miles away in Atlanta. Southland was a big jukebox operation and a distributor for independent record labels, which were the only labels that recorded our kind of music in those days. Back then, music was regional instead of national like it is today. The regional distributors acted as regional talent scouts for the indies.
As soon as I walked into Southland, I met a very nice lady named Gwen Kessler. I asked her if she would listen to my tape. She accepted it and promised me she would. I thanked her and left. She had come to Atlanta in 1948 to open a branch of King Records, based in Cincinnati, and then had gone to work for Southland. She listened to the tape and liked it well enough to play it for Ralph Bass, a King talent scout, the next time he was in Atlanta. “It’s a monster,” he told her. “Where can I find these guys?”
We didn’t know any of this was going on. We continued to play all around the area that picked up WIBB and WBML, not really letting on to people that we didn’t have a record out. One night in January 1956 we were playing a club called Sawyer’s Lake, not too far from Milledgeville, Georgia. There was a terrible storm outside, with rain really coming down, but the place was packed anyway. Up North the same storm was dropping snow everywhere, grounding all the planes, including the one Leonard Chess, the owner of Chess Records of Chicago, was supposed to be on. At first he had rejected “Please Please,” then changed his mind and tried to get down that night to sign us. We didn’t know this was going on, either.
While we were on stage we saw over in the corner a white face amid a whole bunch of black ones. We thought it had to be another club owner looking us over. At intermission he introduced himself as Ralph Bass and said he liked the show. We thanked him and waited for him to offer us a club date.
“I’ve heard your demo of ‘Please Please,’ he said. “Do you have any other tunes of your own?”
“We’ve got a good one called ‘Good Good Lovin’,’” I said.
“And a nice baseball dance routine that goes with it,” Bobby said.
When we sang “Good Good Lovin’,” we danced into baseball positions—pitcher and catcher and I was the batter. I took a swing and then danced real fast, like I was rounding the bases. We mentioned it because we thought he would be interested in the stage act.
“Yessir, we’ve got a lot of songs of our own,” I said.
“Good,” he said, “because I want you to record for King Records.”