After the breakup I spent the summer playing around Florida with Fats Gonder and pickup bands, playing every place there just like I’d played every place in Georgia. That’s what you do; you just keep working. It’s just like I do now.
During this time King was putting out things that I’d recorded with the original group. In April “Gonna Try” came out. You can hear gospel in it, but it’s a very tired song. It was up-tempo in those days, but it’s tired because it’s based on an old takeoff rhythm. The sax player on the record was Little Richard’s man, Wilbert Smith, who later became Lee Diamond when he started fronting the Upsetters. In July, King put out “Love or a Game” and “Messing with the Blues,” one of the few blues tunes I’ve ever recorded. In October they released “You’re Mine, You’re Mine” and “I Walked Alone.” “You’re Mine, You’re Mine” comes out of gospel, too. It might seem like a blues to some ears, but the harmony is gospel and that keeps it from being blues. Some of the records did pretty good, but none was really a hit and King wouldn’t let me record any new material. Really, they had dropped me. Nobody calls you up and tells you they’ve dropped you. They don’t call you at all. That’s how you know. But I wasn’t worried. It just made me work that much harder.
Then in October 1957, Little Richard, big as he was, retired from rock ’n’ roll right in the middle of a tour of Australia. Just quit. He said he wanted to devote his life to the Lord. I can understand that and I don’t fault him, but he left his manager, Bumps Blackwell, with a lot of bookings to honor. Mr. Blackwell called Mr. Brantly and asked him to get me to take over some of the southern bookings. I agreed to do it, but I made sure it would be as James Brown this time. I got together with the Upsetters and the Dominions again, and we did the dates. To tell the truth, when those audiences saw what I could do with the dancing and everything, I don’t think they missed Richard too much.
When my part of the tour was done, I recruited a new set of Flames out of the Dominions. I knew that to do my own stuff right I needed my own group. I got Bill Hollings, Louis Madison, and J. W. Archer, taught them the songs and the routines, and started working as James Brown and the Famous Flames again. As singers they were the best group of Flames I ever had, but a later group of Flames was better all around as a stage act.
When Mr. Nathan found out how I went over on the tour and saw that I could still put a group together, he agreed to let me record one more time. Only this time, he wanted us to use somebody else’s material. We cut “Begging, Begging” and “That Dood It.” Rudolph Toombs, who wrote “One Mint Julep,” was one of the writers on both of them. “Begging, Begging” was a kind of slow Hank Ballard type thing, but I put my own stamp on it. “That Dood It” is rockabilly, influenced by Louis Jordan. It’s a humorous story about a man who goes on a treasure hunt, tries to dig some gold, looks back, and there’s a big monster standing behind him. I didn’t cut many comic songs like that, and when I did they didn’t come out as comedy.
Meantime, I was still doing one-nighters all over the South. Whenever I got near Toccoa, I saw Velma and the boys. Before long we had another son, Larry. As busy as I was, I couldn’t get home as often as before, and when I did get home, I could tell Velma and I were drifting apart. More and more I came home a stranger. She was the best home woman I’ve ever had, and she never tried to stop me from making it. She could see what was happening, and she didn’t try to fight it at all. She always had a kind word to say. And later on, she never tried to turn the children against me. After a while I started living with another woman in Macon. Her name was Dessie. We got a house and everything, but she didn’t break up Velma and me. It was time. Time and distance. I still visited, but it just couldn’t be put back together. Through it all, though, we tried to stay friends, and we are friends right today.
“That Dood It” came out in February 1958 and “Begging, Begging” in May. When these two records didn’t do anything, Mr. Nathan really lost faith, telling people, “James Brown is through, washed up. He’ll never record for me again.” For almost a year I didn’t, but I didn’t think I was washed up. I thought I was getting better, but it seemed I was always having to prove myself. After eight or nine months went by without any more recording dates, I could see that Mr. Nathan wasn’t going to do anything, so I decided I better do something.
I had been doing a new song on stage for a while, and I thought it could be a big hit. Back then I always stage-tested my own material; before recording something, I made sure audiences liked it. As we went around doing all our one-nighters I tried different arrangements of the same song to see how the audiences reacted, and then I decided the best way to record it. This particular song was “Try Me,” really a pop tune. I had heard “Raindrops” by Dee Clark and “For Your Precious Love” by Jerry Butler and the Impressions, so I wrote my song to fit between them. Audiences loved it. Mr. Nathan hated it. When I took it to him he wouldn’t even let me record it.
“I’m not spending my money on that garbage,” he said.
“Okay, Mr. Nathan,” I said, “I’ll pay for a demo myself, and then you’ll see.”
I booked the studio time at King, paid Mr. Nathan in advance, and cut the demo later in the summer. At the same time I cut “Bewildered,” a song I’d sung for a long time. When I heard how strong it was on the playback I decided not to let Mr. Nathan hear it. I didn’t want him putting it out with “Try Me” and messing both of them up. I’d seen disc jockeys confused by all my records before, and I knew “Bewildered” could be a hit on its own. So before Mr. Nathan came down from his office to listen to what we’d done, I packed away the tape of “Bewildered” and played “Try Me” for him. He still didn’t like it.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“But, Mr. Nathan, it’s going to be a hit.”
“I don’t want it,” he said. He waved me aside with his cigar and walked out of the control room.
Here I’d spent my own money and I was being dropped by the record company, but I didn’t even try to argue with him. I still had my tape, and I knew it was good. I took it over to Nolan studios and had it made into an acetate, the kind that plays inside-out, like I’d done with “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” back in Toccoa. Only this time I had a whole bunch of copies made, took them around to the disc jockeys I knew, and got them to play it. Big Saul and Hamp Swain played it in Macon. John R, in Nashville, played it over WLAC where half the country could hear it. After a while I got it around to a whole lot of jocks, and it was getting good air play even as an acetate. When Mr. Nathan found out the stations were playing it, he still wasn’t satisfied. He claimed he’d like to put it out but I’d been bumped from the Federal roster because it was full. He had officially dropped me.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “the stations aren’t just playing it, it’s one of their most requested songs.”
“Prove it,” he said.
“Okay, Mr. Nathan,” I said, “I’ll prove it to you. And you’re going to change your mind about James Brown.”
I went to see all the jocks and asked them to call Mr. Nathan to tell him how the song was doing on their stations. After they’d all called him I went back to see him. He’d changed his mind, like I predicted. Wasn’t because of the jocks, though, but because he discovered King had already received orders for twenty-two thousand copies, and the record hadn’t even been cut yet.
“Well, James,” he said, “I’ve decided to give the song a try.
“That’s fine, Mr. Nathan,” I said.
“Good,” he said, “now where’s the tape?”
“Oh, you don’t want that tape, Mr. Nathan. It’s just a demo, a little something I paid for myself.”
“That’s what they’re playing on the radio,” he said.
“Yessir, I know, but a record sounds a little different when you play it at home; the bad parts show up more. I think we need to recut it with some real musicians and careful production.” I smiled a big crocodile grin.
He could see I had him over a barrel, so he arranged a session for the middle of September at Beltone Studios in New York. He wanted to get the song cut and get it out. Mr. Nathan was even going to send Henry Glover, his top A & R man. Over the years Henry had worked with jump bands like Buddy Johnson, Tiny Bradshaw, and Lucky Millinder. He did a lot of arranging, songwriting, and producing. But Henry wouldn’t come; he didn’t think we were popular enough. He sent Andy Gibson instead. That turned out to be fine with me because Andy stayed out of my way, and that’s what I wanted. They hired some experienced musicians from the New York area for the session. Hal “Cornbread” Singer played tenor sax; he got his nickname from the big instrumental hit “Cornbread” that he had in the late forties. Kenny Burrell, the jazz guitarist, was on guitar, and if you listen closely to the record you can hear that it’s his style.
In a way, it was a new start for me, but in another way it was a last chance. I hadn’t recorded in almost a year, the new Flames hadn’t recorded with me but one time, and I knew Mr. Nathan expected something really big out of this New York session. I also knew we already had something big; I was certain enough that I wrote “Tell Me What I Did Wrong” to replace “Bewildered.” If I’d been worried about it, I’d have cut “Bewildered” right then, as insurance, but I didn’t. We recut “Try Me” on September 18 and released it in October. It went to number 1 on the R & B charts immediately and to number 48 on the pop charts. Everything was fixing to change for me again.